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Svetambara

Also Known As Svetambaras
Jainism

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Origin 100 to 454 CE

One of the two principal traditions of Jainism, whose name means white-clad, for its monks and nuns wear simple unstitched white robes, holding that clothing is no barrier to the renunciation that leads to liberation. It teaches that women as well as men can attain final liberation in this life, and indeed holds that one of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, Malli, was a woman. It preserves and reveres a canon of scriptures, the Agamas, said to descend from the teaching of Mahavira, which the Digambaras reject as lost. Svetambara ascetics carry a few possessions such as an alms bowl and a broom to sweep aside insects, and some sub-sects, the Sthanakvasi and Terapanthi, reject image worship while others maintain rich temple devotion. Found mainly in western India, in Gujarat and Rajasthan, the Svetambaras differ from the sky-clad Digambaras over clothing, the spiritual capacity of women, and scripture, within a shared Jain faith.

Facts
Organisation
Governance
Authority through monastic ordination lineage and its seats 1
Mendicant orders (gacchas), each with its own acharya.
Governance
Lay boards or trusts govern, alongside the priesthood 1
Ordination
Open to women and men 1
Sadhvis take the same full ordination as monks and considerably outnumber them.
Ordination
Ordination is into a monastic order, not to a congregation 1
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
History
Separation or Divergence
Each order holds that it preserved the original discipline 1
Separation or Divergence
The Digambara: 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
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Mendicants wear white cloth 1Tradition: Jainism
Defining Doctrinal Position
Women may attain liberation from a woman's birth 1Tradition: Jainism
Defining Doctrinal Position
The Agama canon accepted as authentically preserved 1Tradition: Jainism
Origins
Origin Period
100 to 454 CE 1
Origin Period
The Valabhi council fixes the Svetambara canon in the fifth 1
Place of Origin
Western India: Gujarat and Rajasthan 1
Founder
No founder. 1
Practice
Liturgical Language
Sanskrit 1
Liturgical Language
Ardhamagadhi Prakrit 1
Practice StatusSourced to the subject's own account
Svetambara Jain scripture and monastic practice are openly published and studied, including a large canon of texts preserved and taught without restriction to outside scholarship. 2
Learn More
White-Clad, and the Case for the Robe

Svetambara means white-clad, and the tradition's ascetics wear simple unstitched white cloth. Its argument with the other Jain tradition is not about whether attachment must be renounced but about whether a garment constitutes attachment.

The Svetambara position is that it does not. Renunciation is an interior condition; a monk who owns a robe, an alms bowl and a small broom for sweeping insects from his path is not thereby attached to them, and a discipline that makes nudity the test confuses the sign with the thing. There are practical arguments alongside the doctrinal one (nudity is not workable for a mendicant order in most climates, in most societies, and in particular for women), and the Svetambaras regard those as relevant rather than as concessions.

The consequence that matters most is the position on women. Svetambaras hold that women can attain liberation directly, in a female birth, and they hold that the nineteenth Tirthankara, Malli, was a woman. The Digambaras deny both and count Malli as male. This is not a marginal disagreement about a point of hagiography. It is a disagreement about whether half the human population can achieve the goal of the religion in the body it has, and the two traditions have argued it in public debate for the better part of two thousand years.

The Svetambara ascetic orders reflect it. Nuns substantially outnumber monks, and have done for as long as there are figures.

The tradition also holds, against the Digambaras, that an omniscient being continues to take food, on the ground that a body which continues to exist continues to require it.

A Canon, and Three Ways of Using It

The Svetambaras have scripture, and that is the second great difference.

They hold a canon of forty-five Agamas, descending from Mahavira's teaching by oral transmission and codified at a council at Vallabhi in Gujarat in the fifth century, the year is given as 454 in some sources and as 453 or 466 in others, under Devardhigani Kshamashramana, prompted by the recognition that famine had already cost the community a great deal of what it once held. The Digambaras reject that codification, holding the original teaching to have been lost beyond recovery.

The tradition has three principal branches, and they divide over images rather than over the canon.

Murtipujaka, the image-worshipping majority, maintains the great temple complexes (Ranakpur, Palitana, the Dilwara temples at Mount Abu), and organises its ascetics in gacchas under acharyas.

Sthanakvasi emerged around 1476 from a reform movement associated with Lonka Shah, which held that image worship has no scriptural warrant and that the temple economy had corrupted the religion. Its ascetics wear a cloth over the mouth continually, to avoid harming airborne life, and it worships in plain halls rather than temples.

Terapanth, founded by Acharya Bhikshu in the eighteenth century as a further reform of the Sthanakvasi, is aniconic and is the one Jain body with a genuinely centralised authority: a single acharya heads the entire order, which is unusual in a religion otherwise organised as a federation of teacher-lineages.

Where It Is Now

India recorded 4,451,753 Jains at the 2011 census, about 0.37 per cent of the population. No reliable source divides that between the two traditions, and the proportions sometimes quoted are unsourced. The honest statement is that Svetambaras predominate in Gujarat, Rajasthan and coastal Maharashtra, and Digambaras further south and east.

Svetambara monastic numbers are substantially larger than Digambara ones. A survey from the 1970s and 1980s counted roughly 1,200 monks and 3,400 nuns. Those figures are dated, but the ratio between the sexes is a durable feature and follows directly from the doctrine.

Jain influence is out of all proportion to Jain numbers, and the reason is commercial and philosophical rather than demographic. The prohibition on occupations involving harm to living beings pushed Jain communities historically into trade, finance and jewellery, where they became disproportionately prosperous, and Jain merchant philanthropy has built temples, libraries, hospitals and animal shelters far beyond what four million people would ordinarily sustain. The doctrine of anekantavada, the many-sidedness of reality, that any statement is true only from a standpoint, and that the standpoints must be held together, is Jainism's most exportable idea and among the more sophisticated things any tradition has said about disagreement.

The sallekhana question applies here equally. The Rajasthan High Court held the fast to death to be suicide in August 2015, and the Supreme Court stayed that ruling on 31 August 2015. The practice continues while the matter is unresolved.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 branch's..."

This source names Svetambara directly: "images from both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions together and observes the auspicious days of both, so that the community avoided carrying the sectarian divisions of India's two major Jain..."

This source names Svetambara directly: "ninth Acharya (religious head) of the Svetambara Terapanth sect, stating "in the 1970s, Acharya Tulsi began researching, compiling translations and commentaries on the Jain Agamas," and that "Jain..."

Source Acharya Tulsi (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Ambika, Deities

This source names Svetambara directly: "Devotional worship of Ambika is especially prominent within Svetambara Jain temple practice, where she is among the most frequently depicted of the tradition's yakshis, appearing in temple sculpture..."

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

This source names Svetambara directly: "Tulsi, the ninth Acharya of the Svetambara Terapanth sect, and his successor Yuvacharya (later Acharya) Mahaprajna, with the English translation itself the work of Muni Mahendra Kumar."

Source Ayaro = Acaranga Sutra (Internet Archive)Internet Archive (digitized catalogue record)

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 the..."

Source Bhadrabahu (reference article)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Svetambara directly: "the largest of the twelve Angas of the Svetambara Jain Agama canon, structured as a vast collection of questions the disciple Gautama puts to Mahavira and the answers Mahavira gives, ranging across..."

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 Svetambara directly: "of the Mulasutras (root texts) of the Svetambara Jain Agama canon, is traditionally described as composed by the teacher Shayyambhava as a concise introduction to monastic discipline for his own..."

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

This source names Svetambara directly: "Reliable for the standard scholarly account of the Digambara-Svetambara division: the Digambara legend of a famine-driven migration south to Karnataka under Bhadrabahu during Chandragupta Maurya's..."

Source Digambara (Encyclopaedia Britannica)The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 Svetambara directly: "standard reference translation of both Svetambara Jain Agamas into English, prepared directly from the Prakrit text with introductory notes on each text's content, structure and place in the Jain..."

Kalpa Sutra, Sources

This source names Svetambara directly: "The Kalpa Sutra is a primary Svetambara Jain text, traditionally attributed to Bhadrabahu, and this record states its sectarian scope honestly rather than presenting it as pan-Jain scripture: it is..."

Source Kalpa SutraAttributed to Bhadrabahu

This source names Svetambara directly: "traditionally attributed to the Svetambara monk-scholar Siddhasena Divakara, though his exact dates are disputed and placed variously between the sixth and ninth centuries CE."

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

This source names Svetambara directly: "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, Jainism's most..."

Source Siddhachalam (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Svetambara directly: "Angas, the oldest core texts of the Svetambara Jain Agama canon, and is largely devoted to refuting rival philosophical and religious positions of its day, including materialism, fatalism and..."

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 Svetambara directly: "a reform, image-rejecting (aniconic) Svetambara Jain sect founded in 1760 in the Marwar region of Rajasthan by Acharya Bhikshu, a former Sthanakvasi monk who broke away over questions of monastic..."

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 property..."

Source Digambara (Encyclopaedia Britannica)The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names Svetambara directly: "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 rather than..."

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

This source names Svetambara directly: "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, and this one..."

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Source The JainsPaul Dundas

This source names Svetambara directly: "The Svetambara Agamas are the canonical scriptures of the Svetambara branch of Jainism, a primary religious text transmitted within the Jain tradition itself rather than authored by any single named..."

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

This source names Svetambara directly: "of the Mulasutras (root texts) of the Svetambara Jain Agama canon, is traditionally held to record the final teachings Mahavira gave before his death, and it draws its thirty six chapters together..."

This source names Svetambara directly: "recited daily by followers of the Svetambara Murtipujaka sub-sect, and tradition holds that the surviving five verses are a reduction from a longer original whose missing verses were suppressed..."

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Valabhi, Cities

The written Svetambara canon dates from the assembly held in this city.

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

Belongs to Tradition

Jainism, Religions

Branch Of

Jainism, Religions

Holds Element

Non-injury is the first great vow and governs Svetambara ascetic practice down to the mouth-cloth and the sweeping brush.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The Jain set of eight is its own list and is not the Buddhist one, and the Svetambara enumeration differs again from the Digambara. The eight are laid out in metal before the image at worship.

Non-stealing is the third great vow.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

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

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The marble temples on the mountain were built by Svetambara ministers of the Solanki kings and are held by the order.

A Svetambara monastic belongs to a gaccha descending from a founding teacher, and the affiliation is recorded alongside the name.

Girnar, Sacred Sites

The mountain is where the twenty-second tirthankara is held to have renounced the world and attained liberation, and the Svetambara temples occupy the principal summit.

The fourfold community is held in common with the Digambara tradition, with the two differing over the organisation of its ascetic half rather than over its shape.

Kharatara Gaccha is among the largest and most fully documented of the Svetambara lineages.

Krodha (Anger), Vices

Anger is one of the four passions that bind karma to the soul in the Jain analysis, which both orders hold in common.

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

Greed is the fourth binding passion.

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

Conceit is one of the four binding passions.

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

Deceit is one of the four binding passions.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The identification with Ashtapada is held in common with the Digambara tradition, and neither order disputes the other about this mountain.

Worn permanently over the mouth by the Sthanakvasi and Terapanthi orders, and carried and used intermittently by the image worshipping orders, so its use divides the tradition internally.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Navkar Mantra, Mantras

Held in common with the Digambaras, and among the very few things the two orders have never disputed.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The hill carries several hundred temples built over eight centuries and is the principal Svetambara pilgrimage, climbed and descended in a single day since no one may remain on it overnight.

The soft woollen broom is swept over the ground before sitting or walking, so that no small life is crushed by the movement.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Ranakpur, Sacred Sites

The temple with its fourteen hundred carved pillars is a Svetambara foundation of the fifteenth century and remains in the order's use.

Svetambara means white clad. A mendicant of this tradition wears three unstitched white garments, and holds that clothing is compatible with the vow of non possession.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

The Svetambara ascetic is white clad, keeping a small and specified set of possessions including the mouth cloth, on the reading that total nudity is not required for the vow of non possession.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

The Svetambara nun takes the same five great vows as a monk and lives under the same discipline, and Svetambara nuns considerably outnumber the monks.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Twenty of the twenty-four tirthankaras are held to have attained liberation on the hill, and the Svetambara order maintains its own shrines and pilgrim route on it.

Truthfulness is the second great vow in the Svetambara reckoning as in the Digambara.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

Held, on the same fourfold division of the community.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Held, on the same fourfold division of the community.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Svetambara monks and nuns wear simple white robes and preserve their own canon in Prakrit, and their monastics belong to named lineages with their own rules of ordination.

Drawn in rice grains at the temple as the worshipper's own offering, and read the same way in both Jain communities, the arms standing for the four destinies a soul may take.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Tapa Gaccha is the largest of the Svetambara monastic lineages.

Svetambara asceticism keeps the same regimen of fasting and restraint while permitting the monk a single white robe and an alms bowl.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini

The council at Mathura under Skandila is part of the chain of redactions by which the Svetambara canon reached the form it now has.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

The council at Valabhi under Devarddhi is where the Svetambara canon was written down, and the Agamas the tradition uses today are the text settled there.

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain tradition)

The Svetambara tradition receives the recitation at Pataliputra under Sthulabhadra as the assembly at which what survived of the teaching was collected.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

The Svetambara canon holds that the nineteenth Tirthankara, Malli, was a woman, and that a woman may reach liberation.

The upadhyaya teaches the scriptures to other ascetics, and is the fourth of the five beings saluted in the Namokar Mantra.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Held Differently

Aparigraha (Non-Possession), Virtues

Svetambara teaching holds that the single white robe of the ascetic is not a possession that obstructs the vow, and that non-possession is kept in the mind rather than measured by nakedness.

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

The Svetambara recension has forty-four verses, and the four it lacks are exactly the ones the Digambaras add.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Critiqued Here

Svetambara teaching holds that nudity is not required for full renunciation and that a woman may attain liberation, both of which the Digambara order denies.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

This tradition holds the Agamas as its living scriptural canon, the teaching of Mahavira preserved in Ardhamagadhi Prakrit and given final written form at the Council of Valabhi.

Source The Svetambara Jain AgamasAnonymous (Jain 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

Svetambara ascetics carry a soft broom to sweep the ground before them and some sects wear a cloth over the mouth so that no small creature is drawn in with the breath; the laity keeps a strict vegetarian diet.

Source The Jaina Path of PurificationPadmanabh S. Jaini
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
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Aparigraha, Doctrines

Non-possession, understood as renunciation of attachment rather than of property alone, is held by this tradition's ascetics, who carry minimal permitted possessions such as an alms bowl and a broom.

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

Svetambara monks and nuns wear unstitched white robes and keep a few possessions, an alms bowl and a broom, holding clothing no barrier to liberation; the order includes large numbers of nuns, who may be liberated as men are.

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

Derasar is the Gujarati word used mainly by Svetambara communities.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Source Master of the Devasano Pado Kalpasutra (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)The Metropolitan Museum of Art, curatorial catalogue entries
Source The JainsPaul Dundas
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

The Kalpa Sutra, recounting the lives of the tirthankaras, is scripture specific to this tradition, read aloud each year during Paryushana.

Source Kalpa SutraAttributed to Bhadrabahu

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, and this tradition holds women as well as men can attain it in the present life, citing the Tirthankara Malli as a woman.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Source The JainsPaul Dundas
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

Sadhvi is the Svetambara term for a nun.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Svetambaras also take the vow, ascetics and laypeople alike, withdrawing solids and then liquids by stages while attended and occupied with recitation; the final stage of lying still and waiting is often called santhara.

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

The sthanak is the hall of the Sthanakvasi, an aniconic Svetambara reform that worships without images.

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
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 Agamas.

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

Originates in Language

Source The JainsPaul Dundas
Sanskrit, Languages
Source The JainsPaul Dundas

Position On

The kevalin continues to take food, and a woman may attain omniscience, which is the other point of the division.

Related To

Sources
1. The Jains
Paul Dundas, Routledge, 2002View the Source
2. Wikipedia, Svetambara (source)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
The Jaina Path of Purification
Padmanabh S. Jaini, University of California Press, 1979View the Source
Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India
John E. Cort, Oxford University Press, 2001View the Source
Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women
Padmanabh S. Jaini, University of California Press, 1991View the Source
The Svetambara Jain Agamas
Anonymous (Jain tradition)Codified at the council of Vallabhi
Quote, Codified at the council of Vallabhi
Forty-five texts, whose codification the Digambaras reject as the reconstruction of something already lost.
View the Source
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 sallekhana litigation applies equally to both Jain traditions and remains unresolved.
View the Source
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