Non-violence taken to its logical end.
The path of the Jinas — conquerors of the self. Absolute non-violence, many-sided truth, and liberation earned by one's own austerity: no creator god, no savior, no excuses. Among the oldest living religions of renunciation.
DeitiesThere is no creator and no god who answers. The twenty-four Tirthankaras are liberated souls who taught the way out and then left the world entirely — they cannot hear a prayer and cannot intervene, and Jains know this and worship them anyway, on the reasoning that the devotion changes the devotee. Below them, most Jain temples also house yakshas and yakshis who are held to act, and much popular practice is addressed to those.
Foundedc. 550 BCE · Ganges plain, India
FounderMahavira (24th Tirthankara)
AfterlifeRebirth, until the soul rises free of karma
TextsAgamas
The map
Jainism’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →
c. 1500 BCE Vedic Religion c. 550 BCE Jainism
Every soul is already omniscient.
Not potentially — actually, and buried. The soul in its own nature has infinite knowledge, infinite perception, infinite bliss and infinite energy, and karma is the dirt on the lamp. Nothing is added by the path; something is removed.
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Non-violence is the highest duty.
Ahimsa extends to every living being — the monk sweeps the path before stepping.
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Karma is a substance.
Not a moral ledger and not a law of consequence — fine physical matter, drawn to the soul by passion and stuck there by it, with a measurable weight, duration and intensity. This is the distinctive Jain claim, and the technical literature on it runs to thousands of pages.
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Truth has many sides.
Anekantavada: every view is partial; certainty about the whole is a category error.
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Syadvada — the sevenfold answer.
Every statement is prefixed with syat, in some respect. From some standpoint it is; from some standpoint it is not; from some standpoint it is and is not; from some standpoint it is indescribable — and three combinations of those. It is a formal logic for holding partial truths without collapsing them.
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The soul is liberated by its own effort.
No god saves; austerity and care burn karma from the soul until it rises free.
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Nobody made the universe.
It has always existed and will not end. There is no creator, no first cause, no sustainer and nobody to appeal to, and Jain philosophers spent centuries arguing the case against Hindu and Buddhist theists in detail — chiefly that a creator would need a motive, and any motive implies a lack.
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The Tirthankaras cannot help you.
A liberated soul is out of the system entirely — no body, no location in the world, no perception of it and no capacity to act in it. The tradition states this flatly and then worships them anyway, because the veneration works on the venerator. It is one of the more intellectually honest arrangements in religion.
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Life is everywhere, and it is graded.
Souls occupy earth, water, fire, air and plants with one sense; worms with two; ants with three; bees with four; humans, animals and gods with five. The whole ethic follows from the count — you may not avoid killing one-sensed beings, but you may weight your life to kill fewer and lower.
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Time is a wheel with no beginning.
Six ascending ages and six descending ones, turning forever. We are in the fifth descending age; things are getting worse, liberation from here is no longer possible, and the next Tirthankara is a very long way off. The tradition's account of the present is unusually bleak and it does not soften it.
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The soul is the shape of the body it fills.
It expands and contracts to fit — an elephant's soul fills an elephant, an ant's fills an ant, and the same soul does both across lives. It is not a point and not everywhere; it is exactly as big as what it is currently living in.
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Whether a woman can be liberated from a woman's body.
Svetambaras say yes and hold that the nineteenth Tirthankara, Malli, was a woman. Digambaras say no — liberation requires complete nudity, nudity is not possible for a woman, and a female soul must be reborn male first. This is the sharpest doctrinal division in Jainism and it has never been resolved.
⚖ contested within
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Ahimsa reaches past the act.
You are bound by doing it, by causing it, and by approving it — through mind, speech and body, which makes nine combinations, and the texts enumerate all nine. Intending harm binds karma whether or not anything happens, which is why the vows are about the interior as much as the hands.
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T
The Siddhas.
Every soul that has ever got free, at the crown of the universe, without body, form, or any relation to what is below. They are drawn as an empty human outline because shape is all that is left of the last body. They will never return and cannot be asked for anything.
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M
Mahavira — the ford-maker.
Not a founder but the 24th in a line of teachers who found the crossing: he showed the ford over the river of rebirth, then crossed it himself.
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R
Rishabhanatha — the first.
The first Tirthankara of this descending age, who is said to have taught agriculture, fire, writing, pottery and the seventy-two arts to people who had never needed them before — and then renounced all of it. His mother was liberated before he was. The Rigveda names a Rishabha, and Jains read that as evidence of their own antiquity.
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P
Parshvanatha — the one before.
The 23rd Tirthankara, historical and earlier: Jainism's own evidence that its path was walked before Mahavira taught it.
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The Namokar mantra.
Nine lines bowing to five categories — the enlightened, the liberated, the heads of orders, the teachers, and all monastics everywhere. It names no individual and no god, so it can be said by a Jain of any sect about anyone who qualifies, in any age, including ones the speaker has never heard of.
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Paryushana.
Days of fasting, study, and — at the close — asking forgiveness of everyone, for everything: micchami dukkadam.
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Samayika — forty-eight minutes as a monk.
The layperson formally takes monastic vows for one muhurta, sits on a plain mat with a mouth-cloth and a soft whisk, puts down all activity, and holds equanimity toward every living thing. Then the period ends and they get up and go back to work. It is the most practised thing in Jainism after the mantra.
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Pratikramana — the turning back.
A structured confession of harms done, however small — accounting as spiritual practice.
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Where next
the museum exit — every door leads deeper inSources
7 cited texts
- The sevenfold predication, saptabhangi, standard formulation (rendered)
- Acharanga Sutra 1.2.3 (rendered)
- Verse recited at Kshamavani, from the Pratikramana Sutra (rendered)
- Ratnakarandaka Shravakachara, on the five transgressions that invalidate sallekhana (rendered)
- From the accounts of Mahavira's ascetic years in the Jain canon and its commentaries (rendered)
- Umaswati, Tattvartha Sutra 1.1 (rendered)
- M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, part II
These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.