The five great vows (mahavratas)

Jain ascetics affirm the five great vows: non-violence (ahimsa), truthfulness (satya), non-stealing (asteya), celibacy (brahmacharya), and non-possession (aparigraha). Taken absolutely and for life at ordination, the vows govern every act of the monk or nun, who renounces harm, falsehood, taking what is not given, all sexual activity, and personal property. Lay Jains take corresponding lesser vows (anuvratas), the same disciplines observed in partial, practicable measure suited to householder life.

Jain tradition holds that the fivefold structure of the vows reflects a specific historical development within the lineage of Tirthankaras: Parshvanatha, traditionally regarded as the twenty-third Tirthankara and the figure many historians consider the most plausible historically attested predecessor of Mahavira, is remembered as having taught four vows, omitting celibacy as a separate discipline on the assumption it was included within non-possession; Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara and founder of the tradition in its historically attested form, is credited in texts such as the Acharanga Sutra with separating celibacy out as an explicit fifth vow, a refinement Jain tradition presents as a clarification suited to a later and more lax age rather than a correction of Parshvanatha's teaching.

The five vows organise Jain ethics into a complete program of self-restraint aimed at halting the influx of karma and freeing the soul. They are shared by both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions and rest on the foundational principle of ahimsa, from which the others are understood to follow. Their graduated form, great vows for ascetics, lesser vows for the laity, integrates monk and householder into one moral order, and the culminating discipline of non-possession expresses the Jain ideal of progressive detachment from the material world.

The vow of non-possession lies at the heart of the historic split between the Digambara and Svetambara traditions: Digambara monks read aparigraha as requiring the renunciation of clothing itself, since owning even a single garment is, on their reading, still a form of possession incompatible with the vow's full completion, while Svetambara monks and nuns hold that white robes are compatible with genuine non-attachment so long as the wearer holds no inner clinging to them. The disagreement is not merely about dress but about how literally and completely a vow taken as absolute must be embodied, and it has never been resolved between the two communities, which have maintained separate monastic lineages over the question for many centuries.