India · traditionally 599–527 BCE (many scholars: c. 499–425 BCE)
Mahāvīra
Twenty-fourth Jain tīrthaṅkara, a contemporary of the Buddha
Left princely life, practised severe austerities, and taught that liberation comes from the ‘three jewels’—right faith, right knowledge, right conduct—and five vows led by non-violence. His teachings were preserved orally in the Jain canon.
Life and thought
Vardhamāna, later called Mahāvīra (“great hero”), was born into a warrior clan near Vaiśālī in today’s Bihar. Jain tradition dates him 599–527 BCE; many historians put him about a century later, as an older contemporary of the Buddha. At about thirty he renounced household life and spent some twelve years wandering in severe austerity before attaining omniscience (kevala). Jains revere him as the twenty-fourth and last ford-maker (tīrthaṅkara) of this age, not as the founder of their religion.
He wrote nothing; his teachings were memorised by disciples and later compiled in the Jain canon. Their core: every living thing, even plants and particles of earth and water, has a soul; karma is a fine matter that clings to the soul when we act with passion; and liberation comes by stopping its inflow and burning off what has bound. Hence the five great vows—non-violence, truth, not stealing, chastity and non-possession—with ahiṃsā first. Buddhist texts criticised his stress on austerity; Gandhi absorbed his non-violence.
Shaped
1869–1948Mohandas K. GandhiGandhi’s commitment to non-violence drew on Gujarat’s Jain culture, especially his Jain friend and mentor Raychandbhai.Criticised by
c. 480–400 BCE (debated; an older dating is c. 563–483 BCE)The Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama)Buddhist suttas criticise the Jain leader Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta (Mahāvīra) for his emphasis on austerity to burn off past karma.Meanwhile, in other traditions
c. 624–546 BCEThalesSage of Miletus, traditionally the first Greek philosopherc. 610–546 BCEAnaximanderThales’ successor, credited with the first Greek world mapc. 586–526 BCEAnaximenesThird Milesian, who made air the first principletraditionally 6th c. BCELaoziLegendary sage credited with the Daodejingc. 570–495 BCEPythagorasFounder of a philosophical and religious brotherhood at Croton551–479 BCE (traditional)ConfuciusTeacher from Lu who sought to revive the Zhou wayOn the record
Mahāvīra lived traditionally 599–527 BCE, though many scholars date him later.
Jain tradition gives his birth as 599 BCE and his death as 527 BCE (Śvetāmbara) or 510 BCE (Digambara). Modern historians tie his dates to the Buddha’s: Paul Dundas places his death around 425 BCE or a few years after, and Jeffery D. Long gives c. 499–427 BCE. The atlas keeps the traditional dates on the map and says that scholars date him later.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Mahavira” (citing Dundas and Long) · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Jain Philosophy”
Gandhi’s non-violence drew on Gujarat’s Jain culture, especially his Jain friend and mentor Raychandbhai.
Gandhi’s Autobiography devotes a chapter to Raychandbhai (Shrimad Rajchandra), the Jain poet and thinker he met on landing in Bombay in 1891. He names him first among ‘three moderns’ who left a deep impress on his life, with Tolstoy and Ruskin, and calls him his refuge in moments of spiritual crisis, though not his guru.
Sources: M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, ch. 1, “Raychandbhai”