Mahavira (Vardhamana)

Mahavira — born as Vardhamana, “the Increasing One” — is the 24th and final Tirthankara of the present time-cycle. The traditional dates are 599–527 BCE, making him a contemporary of the Buddha. He is not the founder of Jainism; he is the last in a long line of 24 Tirthankaras, and built his teaching on the foundation laid by Parshvanatha 250 years earlier.

He was born in Kundalapura, near present-day Vaishali in Bihar, to King Siddhartha and Queen Trishala (also called Priyakarini in the Shvetambara tradition). His birth is celebrated as Mahavir Jayanti — one of the most important festivals in modern Jain practice.

At the age of thirty, he renounced the world. He spent twelve and a half years in severe ascetic practice — wandering, meditating, fasting, often in conditions of extreme privation. The traditional accounts describe ordeals that test the limits of physical endurance: nights spent in hostile villages, periods of complete fasting, exposure to extreme weather, attacks by both humans and animals. Through it all, he maintained perfect equanimity (sāmāyika) — the central practice of his teaching.

At age 42, on the banks of the Rijuvaluka river, he attained kevala-jnana — omniscient knowledge.

For the next 30 years, he taught. He established the four-fold saṅgha — monks (sādhu), nuns (sādhvī / aryikā), laymen (śrāvaka), and laywomen (śrāvikā). His chief disciples were the eleven gaṇadharas, of whom Indrabhuti Gautama was the foremost; the gaṇadharas organized his teaching into the canonical scriptures.

He attained mokṣa at age 72, at Pavapuri in modern-day Bihar. The night of his liberation — Dīpāvalī in some traditions — is associated with the festival of lights; many Jains observe Diwali specifically as Mahavir-nirvana day.

Mahavir's teaching consolidated and refined what came before. He explicitly added the fifth vow — brahmacarya (celibacy) — to Parshvanatha's four. He emphasized the equality of all souls and admitted women to the monastic order. His doctrines of anekāntavāda (multiple viewpoints) and syādvāda (conditional predication) became hallmarks of Jain philosophy.

For the modern world, Mahavir occupies an unusual position: a fully historical religious founder-figure (in practice, even if not in tradition) whose teachings — rigorous non-violence, careful epistemic humility, individual responsibility for liberation — are unusually compatible with secular modern thought.