Religion founded in the 6th century BC by Varadahaman Mahavira, a contemporary of the Buddha and a nobleman from Vaisali (a centre of the GANGES CIVILIZATION). Mahavira travelled throughout the Ganga-Yamuna region, preaching a faith of ascetism and a denial of the existence of a supreme deity. A major ethical principle of Jain belief is ahimsa (the practice of non-injury to any living thing). Mahavira is believed to be the last of the 24 Tirthankaras or Jain saviours.
Early Jain monuments date to the MAURYAN ruler Ashoka (273–232 BC) and the faith soon spread throughout India, with Jain temples and sculptures coexisting with Buddhist, and later Hindu constructions. A major Jain site of the 9th–10th century AD is Shravana Belgola in Karnataka, South India. Numerous stone shrines flank a stairway on a granite hill surmounted by a monolithic sculpture of the naked saint Bahubali, the son of the first Tirthankara; at 17.7 m tall this is the largest freestanding sculpture in India.
V.A. Smith: The Oxford History of India, 4th edn (Delhi, 1981), 76–80; G. Michell: The Penguin guide to the monuments of India I (Harmondsworth, 1989), 24–5, 466–8.Copied