Ahimsa Hand

The raised open palm with a wheel set in its centre is a modern emblem of Jainism and of its cardinal principle, ahimsa, non-violence or non-harm toward all living beings. The open hand signifies stop, or reassurance (abhaya, fearlessness); the wheel within it is the dharmachakra, here inscribed with the word ahimsa. The symbol expresses the Jain conviction, stated in the Acaranga Sutra, that all beings wish to live and none wishes to die, and that harming any life, down to the one-sensed beings of earth, water, fire, air and plants, binds karma to the soul.

Jain ethics accordingly extend care further than most traditions, governing diet, occupation, the avoidance of root vegetables and fermented food by the strict, and the ascetic's every movement, including the practice of sweeping the path ahead and straining drinking water so as not to injure unseen life. The emblem is used across both of the tradition's major branches, Digambara and Svetambara, whose monastic practice and scriptural canon differ, most visibly over whether ascetics go unclothed, but who reached common ground on this single unifying image. The wheel at the centre of the palm is also drawn with twenty-four spokes in some renderings, read as the teaching of the twenty-four Tirthankaras of this cosmic era, the same cycle of teachers whose last, Mahavira, the surrounding cosmology and the anniversary that produced the emblem both commemorate.

The composite image was adopted in 1975 by a consensus of Jain sects, drawn together the previous year at the 2,500th anniversary observances of the nirvana of Mahavira, the tradition's twenty-fourth and last Tirthankara of the present era, when representative bodies of both Digambara and Svetambara Jainism agreed on a single common emblem for the first time in the religion's history. It is often shown within a larger outline shaped like the Jain cosmos (loka, conceived as a standing cosmic figure), topped by a crescent for the siddhashila, the abode of liberated souls, with three dots above the wheel for the three jewels of right faith, right knowledge and right conduct.

The motto usually printed beneath, Parasparopagraho Jivanam, all life is bound together in mutual support, is drawn from the Tattvartha Sutra, a foundational Jain text of the early centuries CE. The emblem is thus a deliberately ecumenical modern summary of a very old ethical system, not itself an ancient sign, and it now appears on Jain temples, publications and organisations worldwide, including in the sizeable Jain diaspora communities of North America, the United Kingdom and East Africa, where it serves the same identifying function a cross or crescent serves for other faiths abroad.