MAHĀVIRA. — M., “Great Hero,” is the title given by his coreligionists to Vardhamāna, considered the founder of Jainism (v.), although he was merely the reformer of a monastic order founded by Pārśva some 250 years earlier.
The reform consisted in a tightening of the rule, to which M. added the prohibition of possessing anything and the practice of absolute nudity. The epithet of M., suggested by the heroism with which Vardhamāna endured the most severe ascetic mortifications, was later associated with that of Jina, “the Conqueror” (of the world and its passions), from which derive the words jaina, “follower of the Jina,” and Jainism, the Jain religion. The Pārśvites, on the other hand, called themselves Nirgrantha, “Unbound” (from worldly interests), and thus M. is designated in Buddhist sources by the Pāli name Nigamāna Nātaputta, “the Unbound, son of Nāta,” that is, of Siddhārtha, the chief (rāja, rex) of the city of Kuṇḍapura, now Basukund in the territory of Vaiśālī, the modern Besārha, capital of Videha or Tīrtha. The Nāta (Sanskrit Jñātr) belonged to the military nobility; when Siddhārtha died, he was succeeded in government by his eldest son Nandivardhana, and Vardhamāna, who was the second son and had a wife and a daughter, abandoned his family at the age of 28, following, Buddha (v.), the monastic vocation. He spent twelve years alternating meditation with long fasts and austere penances, until in the thirteenth year he attained perfect knowledge (kevalajñāna) and was regarded as a spiritual conqueror and a saint. M. devoted the last thirty years of his life to instructing disciples and propagating the faith in Magadha, Videha, and Kośala, that is, in the province of Oudh and in Bihar. He died at the age of seventy-two in Pāvā, now Pāvāpuri, near Patna. The date of his death is controversial; the most probable is 477 B.C., from which it is deduced that M. was born in 549.