Jainism

Early History

The origins of the doctrine of the Jinas are obscure. According to tradition, the religion has no founder. It is taught by 24 omniscient prophets, in every half-cycle of the eternal wheel of time. Around the fourth century BCE, according to modern research, the last prophet of our epoch in world history, Prince Vardhamāna—known by his epithets mahāvīra (“great hero”), tīrthańkāra (“builder of a ford” [across the ocean of suffering]), or jina (spiritual “victor” [over attachment and karmic bondage])—renounced the world, gained enlightenment (kevala-jñāna), and henceforth propagated a universal doctrine of individual salvation (moksa) of the soul (ātman or jīva) from the karmic cycles of rebirth and redeath (samsāra). In contrast to the dominant sacrificial practices of Vedic Brahmanism, his method of salvation was based on the practice of nonviolence (ahisā) and asceticism (tapas). After enlightenment, Mahāvīra formed a mendicant order of monks and nuns, called nirgranthas and nirgranthīs (“unattached ones”), which became the heart of the caturvidha-sańgha (“fourfold community”) of monks, nuns, male laity, and female laity. The mendicant orders of the nirgranthas were the first monastic organizations of the world. Access was not predicated on social criteria and, in principle, was open to all. Already during Mahāvīra's lifetime, the mendicants began [Page 976]to split into many independently organized groups or orders (gańa, gaccha, etc.) which, together with their respective lay following (often recruited from a particular local clan or caste), formed rival sects under a variety of designations. From the beginning of the Common Era, additionally, the two main denominations of the Digambara monks (“sky-clad”—that is, naked) and the Śvetāmbara (“white-clad”) monks developed along geographic and doctrinal lines. The former are still predominant in north, central, and southern India, and the latter prevail in western India.

Colonialism and Revivalism

The Sanskrit word jaina (colloquially: jain), or jainī, came to be more commonly used as a self-designation and in north India as a family name by the followers of the Jina under the influence of religious nationalism and communalism, in the 19th century, while the English word Jainism replaced ancient terms such as jina-dharma (“doctrine of the Jina”) or jina-mārga (“path of the victorious”). At the same time, the preachings (pravacana) of Mahāvīra, which are said to inform the scriptural corpus (āgama or siddhānta) redacted in the fifth century CE, were for the first time made accessible to a wider public, both Jain and non-Jain, through print editions and translations into Indic and European languages. Particularly influential were the text editions and translations of H. Jacobi (1882, 1884, 1894), which furnished clear textual proof for the historical independence of the Jaina tradition from Brahmanism and Buddhism. They still serve as reference points for the construction of communal Jain identity by means of modern charters such as Jaina law (Jain, 1926; Jaini, 1916), Jaina community (Sangave, 1959), Jain ecology (Singhvi, 2002), or Jain economics (Mahāprajña, 2000), and are cited in public forums, such as the first World Congress of Religions in Chicago 1893, where Jainism was presented to a global public by the lawyer V. R. Gandhi (1893), acting on behalf of the Śvetāmbara monk Vijaya Ānanda Sūri (1836–1896) who, in accordance with Jain monastic rules, could not use any means of transport and travel overseas.

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