Article: Mahāvīra

Mahāvīra is tested
Image by Wellcome Trust Library © Wellcome Library, London

‘Mahāvīra’ is a title meaning ‘great hero’ in Sanskrit. Other titles of the 24th Jina are:

• ‘Sanmati’ – ‘of righteous thoughts’ – which is hardly used
• ‘Niggantha’ in Pali or ‘Nirgrantha’ in Sanskrit – ‘without knots’ – which is a title given to ascetics because ‘knots’ mean the household life of desires, duties and worries. This is how he is referred to in Buddhist texts
• the Pali name Nataputta in Buddhist texts, which means ‘son of the Jnatri clan’.

His name at birth was Vardhāmana, which means ‘ever increasing’.

Idol of Mahāvīra
Image by Dayodaya © CC BY-SA 3.0

Mahāvīra’s existence is independently documented in Buddhist texts but the two main Jain sects of Digambaras and Śvetāmbaras have slight differences in their accounts of his life. A near-contemporary of the Buddha, Mahāvīra lived about 563 to 483 BCE, which is around a century later than his earliest traditional dates.

In the early days of Jain studies, Western scholars thought Mahāvīra had founded the Jain religion but it is now widely accepted that he reformed an established religious tradition. He is credited with adding a fifth vow to the four preached by the 23rd Jina, Pārśvanātha or Lord Pārśva.