The Split, and the Living Tradition

Within a few centuries of Mahavira the community divided into the two branches it retains today, the Svetambara ("white-clad") and the Digambara ("sky-clad"). Their differences bear directly on how Mahavira is remembered: the Digambara hold that the fully renounced ascetic, following Mahavira, goes naked, that a true kevalin no longer takes food, and that a woman cannot attain liberation in her present body; the Svetambara clothe their monks, hold that the omniscient still eat, affirm that women can be liberated, and preserve a biography in which Mahavira married (to Yashoda) and had a daughter, where the Digambara hold him a lifelong celibate. The branches also differ over the scriptures: the Svetambara Agamas, the canonical texts, are rejected as authentic by the Digambara, who hold the original canon lost.

Jainism today numbers on the order of four to five million adherents, concentrated in India but present worldwide, and Mahavira's radical non-violence, his anekantavada, and his ethic of non-possession continue to shape a living community that reveres him each year at Mahavir Jayanti as the great hero who gave the eternal teaching its enduring form.