Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Denominations

Digambara

Also Known As Digambaras The plural, used of the members of the order.
Jainism

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Origin 100 to 200 CE

One of the two principal traditions of Jainism, whose name means sky-clad, for its ideal that the fully advanced male ascetic renounces all possessions including clothing, going naked as a sign of complete non-attachment and victory over shame and desire. It holds that liberation, the freeing of the soul from the bondage of karma, requires this utter renunciation, and teaches that a true kevalin, one who has attained omniscience, no longer needs food or bodily sustenance. It maintains that women cannot achieve final liberation in their present birth and must first be reborn as men, and it does not accept the canon of scriptures preserved by the other tradition, holding the original teachings to have been lost. Concentrated in central and southern India, the Digambaras differ from the white-robed Svetambaras over nudity, the status of women, and scripture, while sharing the core Jain path of non-violence and asceticism.

Facts
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Full mendicancy requires the abandonment of clothing 1Tradition: Jainism
Defining Doctrinal Position
Liberation is attained only from a man's birth 1Tradition: Jainism
Defining Doctrinal Position
The original canon held to have been lost 1Tradition: Jainism
Organisation
Governance
Authority through monastic ordination lineage and its seats 1
Governance
Lay boards or trusts govern, alongside the priesthood 1
Ordination
Restricted to men 1
Full mendicant ordination (muni) is given to men, since it requires nudity
Ordination
Ordination is into a monastic order, not to a congregation 1
Ordination
The full female ordination lineage is held lapsed; revival contested 1
Digambara women take the aryika vows, which the tradition holds to be a lesser state
Origins
Origin Period
100 to 200 CE 1
Origin Period
Jain tradition places the parting earlier 1
Place of Origin
Southern and western India: Karnataka, Maharashtra and Bundelkhand 1
Founder
No founder. 1
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
India's 2011 census recorded 4.45 million Jains nationwide but asks about religion, not mendicant order, so no government count of Digambaras specifically exists. Scholars estimate Digambaras at roughly one third to one half of that total, some 1.5 to 2 million adherents, concentrated in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, an estimate resting on regional temple and community association records rather than a direct census question. 1
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2011-01-01 3
Basis of the Membership Figure
Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 1
History
Separation or Divergence
Each order holds that it preserved the original discipline 1
Separation or Divergence
The Svetambara: the two mendicant orders had separated by about the second century CE over nudity as a requirement of full mendicancy, women's capacity for liberation, and the authenticity of the canon 1
Separation or Divergence
The two traditions' accounts of the parting differ and no date is agreed 1
Date of Separation
100 to 200 CE 1
Practice
Liturgical Language
Sanskrit 1
Liturgical Language
Jain Shauraseni Prakrit 1
Practice StatusSourced to the subject's own account
Digambara Jain scripture and monastic practice, including the tradition's distinctive renunciation of clothing by monks, are openly documented and studied by outside scholars, with no closed initiatory core withholding description of the tradition. 2
Learn More
Sky-Clad, and What the Nudity Is For

Digambara means sky-clad, and the practice the name records is the most visible difference within Jainism: the fully advanced male ascetic owns nothing whatever, including clothing, and goes naked.

The reasoning is not exhibitionist and is not incidental. Jainism holds that the soul is bound by karma, understood as a subtle physical substance that adheres through attachment and action, and that liberation requires its complete removal. Possession is attachment. A garment is a possession, a preference, a thing to be protected and replaced; and shame at its absence is itself an attachment to the body and to the opinion of others. The Digambara position is that the logic admits no exception, and that a tradition permitting the ascetic a robe has stopped short of what its own analysis requires.

Two further positions follow. The tradition holds that a kevalin, one who has attained omniscience, no longer takes food, the body of such a being no longer requiring it. And it holds that a woman cannot attain liberation in a female birth and must first be reborn male, a position argued partly from the impossibility of her practising complete nudity and partly from a claim about bodily capacity, and rejected outright by the other Jain tradition. That disagreement was fought out in public debate, notably in 1124, and it remains the sharpest doctrinal division in the religion.

Nuns in the Digambara tradition wear a single white cloth and are not counted as full ascetics, which follows from the same reasoning and is exactly the point at which the tradition's critics say the reasoning costs more than it is worth.

The Scriptures They Do Not Accept

The Digambaras hold that the scriptures are lost.

Both Jain traditions agree that Mahavira's teaching was transmitted orally for centuries. They disagree entirely about what survived. The Svetambaras hold a canon of forty-five Agamas, codified at a council at Vallabhi in the fifth century. The Digambaras reject that canon as the reconstruction of something already gone: on their account the transmission failed, the original teaching did not survive, and what the other side codified is not it.

What they have instead is a literature dating from their own earliest surviving text, the Satkhandagama, of the second century CE, which preserves fragments held to descend from the lost teaching. The corpus is organised not as a canon but into four categories of subject matter. The Tattvartha Sutra is accepted by both traditions, in slightly different recensions, and is the nearest thing Jainism has to a shared statement of doctrine.

The split itself is dated differently by each side, and the accounts are irreconcilable. The Digambara version has a twelve-year famine in Magadha under Chandragupta Maurya driving Bhadrabahu's monks south, with those who remained in the north adopting robes in their absence. The Svetambara version has the Digambaras breaking away some six centuries after Mahavira, under a monk named Sivabhuti. The decisive scholarly observation is chronological: the earliest surviving Svetambara account dates from the fifth century CE and the earliest Digambara one from the tenth. Both are retrospective by centuries, and the division was almost certainly gradual rather than an event.

Where It Is Now

India recorded 4,451,753 Jains at the 2011 census, about 0.37 per cent of the population, and world estimates run to four or five million. No credible source splits that figure between Digambara and Svetambara, and the confident proportions sometimes quoted should not be relied on. Digambaras are concentrated in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Monastic numbers are very small. A survey conducted in the 1970s and 1980s counted something like 125 Digambara monks and 50 nuns, against far larger Svetambara figures. That count is badly dated and should be read only as an order of magnitude.

Authority is decentralised, and the tradition's principal internal division concerns it. Bhattarakas are clerical administrators holding institutional office; the Bisapantha accepts their authority and the Terapanthi, strong in Rajasthan, rejects it. Further groupings exist alongside, including the Taranpanthi, who reject image worship.

The live legal question is sallekhana, the vow to fast to death, undertaken by a Jain who judges the body no longer capable of sustaining practice. In August 2015 the Rajasthan High Court held it to be suicide, punishable under the penal code, and not an essential practice of Jainism and therefore not protected as religious freedom. The Jain community petitioned, and the Supreme Court of India stayed the ruling on 31 August 2015. The practice remains lawful pending a final decision. The tradition's own position is that sallekhana is the opposite of suicide (undertaken without passion, with the community's knowledge, and only when death is already near), and that the court applied a category that does not fit.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Digambara directly: "holding images from both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions side by side and observing the auspicious days of both, so that the ashram serves the wider Jain community without carrying either..."

This source names Digambara directly: "Its main temple deliberately holds images from both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions together and observes the auspicious days of both, so that the community avoided carrying the sectarian..."

This source names Digambara directly: "credited with a major role in the Digambara-Svetambara split and with predicting a famine that led part of the Jain community to migrate south, functions as a tertiary orientation source drawing on..."

Source Bhadrabahu (reference article)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Digambara directly: "Chavundaraya, remembered in Digambara tradition for commissioning the work as an act of devotion, raised the statue in Karnataka's Digambara heartland, and the site around it grew into one of..."

This source names Digambara directly: "are read differently across the Digambara and Svetambara traditions may need a more specialized source alongside it."

Source Cycles of Time (Jainpedia)No individual author named; content credited to Professor Nalini Balbir

This source names Digambara directly: "directly from the split between the Digambara and Svetambara branches already recorded here, and preceding by more than seven centuries Jagatchandra Suri's founding of the Tapa Gaccha, the..."

This source names Digambara directly: "Britannica's article on the Digambara sect of Jainism."

Source Digambara (Encyclopaedia Britannica)The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names Digambara directly: "Press book translates and analyzes the Digambara and Svetambara texts debating whether a woman can attain liberation, the oldest formal doctrinal dispute between the two major Jain orders."

This source names Digambara directly: "Digambara tradition holds that a severe twelve-year famine struck Magadha during the reign of the Mauryan emperor Chandragupta, and that the monk Bhadrabahu led a body of ascetics south to Karnataka..."

Source Digambara (Encyclopaedia Britannica)The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names Digambara directly: "in 981, also recorded here, the Digambara monk and scholar Jinasena, working at the court of the Rashtrakuta emperor Amoghavarsha the First in the Deccan, composed the Adipurana, a Sanskrit epic..."

This source names Digambara directly: "channel dedicated solely to the Digambara sect of Jainism, it broadcasts Hindi language programming built around the philosophy of ahimsa, non violence, associated with Lord Mahavira, including..."

This source names Digambara directly: "under parent Sea TV Network Ltd, its Digambara sect focus, and its programming lineup, citing contemporaneous Indian trade press (Ahimsa Times, DTH News) at launch and corroborated here against the..."

Kalpa Sutra, Sources

This source names Digambara directly: "the Svetambara tradition, and the Digambara tradition does not use this text at all, a documented division this record carries rather than smoothing over."

Source Kalpa SutraAttributed to Bhadrabahu

This source names Digambara directly: "Roughly eighty two years after the Digambara-Svetambara split, already recorded here, and about three hundred seventy years before Devarddhi-gani redacted the Svetambara canon at Valabhi in 453..."

This source names Digambara directly: "survey of Jainism identifies the Digambara poet Jinasena, working in the ninth century CE, as the author, with his pupil Gunabhadra, of the versions of the Universal History that stand as the..."

This source names Digambara directly: "rule in the long span between the Digambara and Svetambara sects each settling their own scripture in the mid first millennium and the flourishing of Jain literary and artistic patronage under the..."

Satkhandagama, Sources

This source names Digambara directly: "Bhutabali, is the earliest surviving Digambara Jain canonical text, conventionally placed in the second century CE."

Source SatkhandagamaPushpadanta and Bhutabali (attributed)

This source names Digambara directly: "attributed to the ancient Digambara Jain teachers Pushpadanta and Bhutabali, is a primary source of the first order, one of the oldest and most important canonical texts of Digambara Jainism..."

Source ShatkhandagamaPushpadanta and Bhutabali

This source names Digambara directly: "its two temples representing both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions and its status as the only Jain monastery outside India; and for the 2012 addition of a full replication of Shikharji..."

Source Siddhachalam (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Digambara directly: "with an arched screen behind, in the Digambara manner, with a goat, his identifying cognizance, in relief on the base."

This source names Digambara directly: "by both major Jain traditions, Digambara and Svetambara, a rare point of shared textual authority this record notes rather than smoothing into one uniform account."

Source Tattvartha SutraUmaswati

This source names Digambara directly: "Encyclopaedia Britannica judges the Digambara-Svetambara division to have been a gradual development rather than a single break: by the first century CE a live debate over whether a monk who owned..."

Source Digambara (Encyclopaedia Britannica)The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names Digambara directly: "and monastic literature of both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions read together, covering cosmology, karma theory, ethics and the path to liberation as each tradition's own texts present them..."

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
The Jains, Sources

This source names Digambara directly: "and doctrinal record of both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions read side by side, which is itself a real editorial choice: many general accounts of Jainism default to one tradition's framing..."

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

This source names Digambara directly: "holds as canonical teaching, but the Digambara branch of Jainism does not accept this same canon, so it should be understood as representing one branch's scripture specifically, not Jainism as a..."

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

This source names Digambara directly: "Wikipedia's article on Digambara, a continuously edited tertiary source with no fixed publication year, accessed 2026-08-20."

Source Wikipedia, Digambara (source)Wikipedia contributors

Belongs to Tradition

Jainism, Religions

Branch Of

Jainism, Religions

Critiqued

Agamas, Scriptures & Texts

This tradition holds the original teaching of Mahavira and the true agamas to have been lost, and does not accept the Agamas canon preserved and read as scripture by the Svetambara tradition.

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

Holds Element

Non-injury is the first great vow and the Digambara ascetic keeps it to the point of sweeping the ground before walking and eating only what is freely given.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The arihant has destroyed the four obscuring karmas and attained omniscience while still embodied, and is the first of the five saluted.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The aryika is a Digambara female ascetic, and because the tradition holds that a woman cannot achieve liberation in a female body and cannot go without clothing, her standing is not the equal of the male ascetic she otherwise resembles.

Ashtamangala, Religious Symbols

The Digambara list of eight departs from the Svetambara one, and because a Digambara image is unadorned the set is placed before it rather than worked onto it.

Non-stealing is the third great vow, understood to cover taking anything not expressly given.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Chastity is the fourth great vow and is complete continence for the Digambara ascetic.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Digambara monks go without clothing as a sign of total renunciation, holding that clothing is itself a possession incompatible with complete non-attachment.

The fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen is common to both traditions, and it is the community rather than a clergy that carries the teaching forward.

Krodha (Anger), Vices

Anger is one of the four passions that bind karma to the soul in the Jain analysis.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
Lobha (Greed), Vices

Greed is the fourth binding passion and the last to be given up on the Jain ascetic path.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
Mana (Conceit), Vices

Conceit is one of the four binding passions in the Jain analysis.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
Maya (Deceit), Vices

Deceit is one of the four binding passions, and the Jain analysis treats it as a distortion of the soul rather than only a wrong toward another.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Jain tradition identifies the mountain with Ashtapada, where the first tirthankara is held to have attained liberation.

Navkar Mantra, Mantras

Recited before anything else. Its five salutations name offices rather than persons, so no founder stands in it.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The Digambara order keeps a small number of its own temples on the hill and does not contest the Svetambara possession of it, which distinguishes this hill from Sammed Shikharji and Girnar.

Truthfulness is the second great vow, kept as restraint of speech as much as accuracy of statement.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The lay Jain man is one of the four divisions of the community, and the lay vows are the same vows the ascetic takes, kept in a limited form.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The monolithic figure of Bahubali on the hill is the greatest Digambara monument, and the anointing performed at intervals of twelve years is the order's largest observance.

The lay Jain woman is the fourth division of the community.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The siddha has shed all karma and left embodiment for ever, and is the second of the five saluted.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The four arms are the four states into which a soul is born, and the sign is drawn in rice before the image with three dots for the three jewels and a crescent above for the abode of the liberated.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Digambara asceticism carries the discipline to its furthest point, the monk owning nothing, wearing nothing and eating once a day from the hands of a layperson.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Held Differently

Aparigraha (Non-Possession), Virtues

Digambara teaching holds that non-possession is complete only when the ascetic gives up clothing itself, so the fully advanced monk is sky-clad and owns nothing at all.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
Bhaktamara Stotra, Hymns & Liturgical Texts

The Digambara recension runs to forty-eight verses, four more than the Svetambara, and the four extra verses describe miracles the two orders do not agree took place.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Girnar, Sacred Sites

Digambara tradition holds that shrines on the peaks are its own and that the summit belongs to it, and possession has been litigated repeatedly.

Rajoharan, Religious Dress & Vestments

A Digambara muni carries a picchi of shed peacock feathers where a Svetambara mendicant carries the woollen broom. The office is the same, to sweep the ground clear of life; the material is not, and the difference is doctrinal rather than local.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
Sadhu, Religious Roles & Titles

The Digambara ascetic is sky clad, owning nothing whatever including clothing, and carries only a water gourd and a peacock feather whisk. The two traditions are named after this difference.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Sammed Shikharji, Sacred Sites

The Digambara order maintains its own shrines and its own route on the same hill, and possession of the hill has been in dispute between the two orders through the courts for more than a century.

Tirthankara, Religious Roles & Titles

The Digambaras hold that all twenty four Tirthankaras were men, that Malli was male, and that liberation cannot be attained in a female body. The same list of twenty four is read differently at exactly one name.

Rejected Here

Muhpatti, Religious Dress & Vestments

The mouth cloth is not worn. A Digambara muni carries nothing that could be called clothing, and the care for air borne life is met by restraint in speech and movement instead.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The Digambara muni is sky clad. Nudity is the vow of non possession carried to its end, since a garment is itself a possession and the wish to keep it is itself an attachment.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The Digambara refusal of Valabhi is the sharpest division in Jainism. Holding that the canon was lost, the Digambaras do not accept the Agamas redacted there as scripture, and rely instead on their own later expositions.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The Digambara position is that the original teaching had already been lost by this time, so no assembly could have recovered it. The recitations the Svetambaras record are therefore not received.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Critiqued Here

Digambara teaching holds that a clothed mendicant has not made the complete renunciation the naked stage expresses, and does not accept the Svetambara canon as the original teaching.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Ahimsa, Doctrines

Non-injury to living beings is the foundational vow of Jain ethics and ascetic practice, held identically by both principal traditions of Jainism.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Digambara ascetics carry non-harming to its furthest point, going naked and owning nothing that might have to be defended, while the lay community keeps a strict vegetarian diet that also excludes root vegetables.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Digambara ascetics carry nonviolence to its limit, sweeping the ground before them with a peacock-feather whisk and eating only once by day, lest an unseen creature be harmed by their movement.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Ajiva, Doctrines

The five insentient substances that make up everything that is not soul are shared Jain metaphysics, held identically across both principal traditions.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

That reality has innumerable aspects and no single statement captures it is shared Jain epistemology, held identically across both principal traditions.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Digambaras hold the doctrine of many-sidedness with the rest of Jainism, teaching that truth is always seen from a standpoint, while applying it strictly enough to reject the Svetambara canon as authoritative.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Aparigraha, Doctrines

Non-possession, understood as renunciation of attachment, reaches its logical endpoint in this tradition's ascetic ideal of owning nothing at all, including clothing.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Aryika is the Digambara term for a nun.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

The cyclical time of descending and ascending half cycles is shared Jain cosmological doctrine, held identically across both principal traditions.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Basadi is the Kannada word used mainly by Digambara communities.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Digambara monks renounce even clothing, the fullest expression of non-attachment the tradition knows; it holds that a woman cannot attain liberation in her present birth, and so cannot take that final step.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Girnar, Sacred Sites
Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Jain Loka, Doctrines

The Jain universe, a vast uncreated structure of hells, the human middle world and heavens crowned by the abode of the liberated, is shared Jain cosmology across both principal traditions.

Source Tattvartha SutraUmaswati
Jiva, Doctrines

The soul as eternal, individual and intrinsically omniscient, present even in plants and elements, is shared Jain metaphysics grounding this tradition's non-violence.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Karma as literal physical matter adhering to the soul, not a metaphor, is shared Jain doctrine held identically across both principal traditions.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Kevala jnana, the omniscience following the shedding of karmic matter, is the goal of liberation, but this tradition holds a woman cannot attain it in her present birth and must first be reborn a man.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Digambara means sky-clad, and the belief that a monk must renounce even clothing to be free of possession and shame is what divided the community from the white-robed Svetambara.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Ratnatraya, Doctrines

Right faith, right knowledge and right conduct as the joint path to liberation is shared Jain doctrine, stated at the opening of the Tattvartha Sutra and held across both principal traditions.

Source Tattvartha SutraUmaswati

Digambaras keep the vow with particular prominence and record its completion publicly, holding it the fitting end of a life of renunciation; a teacher's permission is required, it is declared openly, and it may be abandoned at any point.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Shatkhandagama is this tradition's own foundational scripture, composed to answer the loss of the original agamas that this tradition holds to be real.

Source ShatkhandagamaPushpadanta and Bhutabali

The statue's defining nudity embodies specifically Digambara, sky clad, doctrine that complete spiritual renunciation includes the abandonment of clothing, distinguishing it from Svetambara practice.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Digambaras avoid roots and tubers because uprooting a plant kills it and its flesh is held to house countless minute lives, a rule that follows directly from their strict nonviolence.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Syadvada, Doctrines

The sevenfold predication that puts anekantavada into propositions is shared Jain logical method, held identically across both principal traditions.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The Tattvartha Sutra, the nearest thing Jainism has to an agreed statement of itself, is accepted scripture in this tradition alongside its own Shatkhandagama.

Source Tattvartha SutraUmaswati

Digambara ascetics take the five vows in their absolute form, nonviolence, truth, non-stealing, celibacy and non-possession, the last of which they hold to require renouncing clothing itself.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The five great vows taken absolutely by ascetics and in limited form by lay Jains are shared across both principal traditions, though this tradition's ascetics keep them under its own distinct discipline.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Digambaras teach that liberation cannot be reached from a female body, since a woman cannot practise complete nudity, so she must first be reborn as a man, a position the Svetambara reject.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Originates in Language

Sanskrit, Languages
Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Position On

Omniscience once attained is complete and the kevalin no longer takes food, which is one of the two points on which the Jain communities divided.

Related To

Sources
1. The Jains
Paul Dundas, Routledge, 2002View the Source
2. Wikipedia, Digambara (source)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
3. Religion Data of Census 2011: Jains
Centre for Policy Studies India, 2016View the Source
The Jaina Path of Purification
Padmanabh S. Jaini, University of California Press, 1979View the Source
Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women
Padmanabh S. Jaini, University of California Press, 1991View the Source
Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India
John E. Cort, Oxford University Press, 2001View the Source
Satkhandagama
Pushpadanta and Bhutabali (attributed)The earliest surviving Digambara text
Quote, The earliest surviving Digambara text
Conventionally second century CE. The tradition holds the original teaching lost and rejects the Svetambara canon as a reconstruction.
Rajasthan High Court judgment on sallekhana (August 2015) and the Supreme Court stay
High Court of Rajasthan, 2015August 2015, and the stay of 31 August 2015
Quote, August 2015, and the stay of 31 August 2015
The High Court held the fast to death to be suicide and not essential to Jainism; the Supreme Court stayed the ruling and the matter is unresolved.
View the Source
Tattvartha Sutra
UmaswatiAccepted in both traditions
Quote, Accepted in both traditions
The nearest thing Jainism has to a shared statement of doctrine, held in differing recensions by each side.
View the Source
Community

0 members

Visit This Community

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.