Jain Stories

The stories on this page are about the Tirthankaras and the people who followed them, and about the teachings and practices that grew from their lives. A Tirthankara is a ford-maker, a teacher who crosses the cycle of rebirth and shows others the way across. The Jain tradition counts twenty-four of them, from Rishabhanatha to Mahavira, and the twenty-four Tirthankaras are recorded in the Kalpa Sutra. This page has forty-two stories, and they are arranged in four groups: the twenty-four lives, stories of the faithful, the teachings, and the practices.

The Tirthankaras are listed here in order, each with the image his own page recalls. Rishabhanatha is the first, and Mahavira, whose life runs from prince to omniscient teacher, is the last. Munisuvrata is the Tirthankara in whose age, the page says, Rama lived, and Parshvanatha, the twenty-third, is remembered for his compassion.

The Tirthankaras are not alone in these pages. Bahubali won every contest against his brother Bharata for the throne and then renounced it entirely, and his statue at Gommateshwara honours him. Chandanbala, enslaved and chained, met five impossible conditions for alms and became Mahavira's first woman disciple, later leading his entire order of nuns. Sthulibhadra spent a monsoon in his former lover's house to test his renunciation, then led the council that preserved Jain scripture. Bhadrabahu was the last of those who held the canon complete in memory.

The teaching rests on three jewels, named in the first sutra of the Tattvartha Sutra: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct, which must be practised together. At its centre is ahimsa, non-violence toward every living being, which shapes monastic practice, diet and the Jain view of the soul. Anekantavada is taught by a parable of six blind men and an elephant: each holds a partial truth and takes it for the whole. Monks and nuns take five great vows, and the Jain picture of the universe is Lok Purush, a cosmic being of three tiers. The two main traditions, the Digambara and the Svetambara, are explained here.

Samayika is forty-eight minutes of meditative equanimity, the first of the six daily duties, the Avashyakas. Pratikramana is the ritual of turning back from harm, and its annual form, at Samvatsari, closes Paryushan, the year's most solemn festival, with the mutual forgiveness of Micchami Dukkadam. The Navkar Mantra bows to five kinds of accomplished beings and not to a single god. Varshitap is a fast on alternate days for thirteen months, recalling Rishabhanatha's four-hundred-day fast before he accepted sugarcane juice. Sallekhana is the voluntary, gradual fast at the true end of life, described by the tradition as a purposeful renunciation and not as suicide. The mountain at Shatrunjaya, where a disciple of Rishabhanatha reached liberation, draws pilgrims who climb it barefoot.

A Tirthankara is a ford-maker. Ahimsa is non-violence. Anekantavada is the doctrine of many-sidedness, that truth has more than one aspect. The Avashyakas are the six obligatory daily duties. Digambara means "sky-clad" and Svetambara "white-clad", the names of the two main traditions. The Kalpa Sutra is a Svetambara text recited at Paryushan, and the Tattvartha Sutra is a Jain text of doctrine that both traditions accept. Micchami Dukkadam is the phrase of forgiveness said at the end of Paryushan.