This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Digambara tradition holds that a severe famine lasting twelve years struck the region of Magadha during the reign of the Mauryan emperor Chandragupta, and that the monk Bhadrabahu responded by leading a body of ascetics south to Karnataka, seeking to preserve their strict discipline in a place the famine had not reached. A second group, led by Sthulabhadra, stayed behind in the north and, under the pressure of the famine, accepted concessions the migrating ascetics would not, including the wearing of white garments in place of the nakedness their discipline had previously required.
Historians treat this migration story as legend rather than documented history. The earliest surviving written Digambara version of the account dates only from the tenth century CE, some thirteen centuries after the events it claims to describe, and Encyclopaedia Britannica states plainly that the origin accounts both Jain sects tell about their own beginnings are partisan and unreliable; this account carries the tradition's own story as tradition, not as verified history, and states that limit rather than resolving it.
What this legend represents for Jainism's spread, whatever its underlying historical accuracy, is the community's own explanation for how its ascetics came to be established in Karnataka in the south, a foothold distinct from the community that remained in the north and would, on this account, eventually diverge from it entirely.