This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Whatever its legendary account of origin, Encyclopaedia Britannica judges the division between Jainism's two sects to have been a gradual development rather than a single decisive break. By the first century CE, a live debate had opened within the Jain community over whether a monk who still owned property, clothing included, could achieve moksha, liberation from rebirth, and that debate divided the community into the two sects known today, Digambara ascetics, who renounce clothing entirely, and Svetambara ascetics and nuns, who wear simple white garments.
The division did not end there in a single ruling or council. It was consolidated over time by councils convened afterward to codify the Jain canon that had survived to that point, among them the council at Vallabhi in 454 CE, recognised by the Svetambara tradition, convening well after the underlying disagreement over property and clothing had already opened the split between the two communities.
What this changed for Jainism's spread was the settling, over centuries rather than in a single moment, of two distinct ascetic traditions carrying the same faith forward on different terms, each with its own councils, its own canon, and its own answer to the question of whether ownership and liberation could coexist.