The Sky-Clad Ideal

Digambara Jain monks affirm that the highest ascetics should practise nudity, the name Digambara means "sky-clad." Renouncing even clothing as a possession and an attachment, the fully advanced monk goes without garments, taking the vow of non-possession to its literal conclusion and modelling total detachment from the body and the world. The practice is confined to the most senior male ascetics; Digambara lay life and the earlier stages of monastic life are not conducted in nudity.

Digambara tradition traces the eventual split to a period of hardship, traditionally remembered as a severe famine in Magadha lasting roughly twelve years, associated in later legend with the reign of the Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya (who Digambara tradition holds became a Jain ascetic himself), during which many monks migrated south while a group that remained maintained strict nudity; historians treat this account as a later, legendary framing of what was more likely a gradual, centuries-long regional and doctrinal divergence, with clear sectarian self-identification as Digambara and Svetambara not solidly attested in inscriptions until around the fifth century CE. Digambara texts describe the fully unclothed state as the outward sign of complete inner detachment, so that the vow is considered achievable only after long prior training in the lesser stages of renunciation rather than adopted at the outset of monastic life.