- Lived:
- trad. 599–527 BCE by Śvetāmbara reckoning, 599–510 by Digambara; most modern historians shift him about a century later (death c. 425 BCE) · born at Kuṇḍagrāma near Vaiśālī, in modern Bihar → wandered the Ganges country for forty-two years; died at Pāvā (Pāvāpurī, Bihar)
- Field:
- religion — the twenty-fourth and last tīrthaṅkara of Jainism; radicalizer of an inherited path and architect of its fourfold community
- The Big Idea:
- He spent twelve years testing, on his own body, whether a human life can be lived without harming any living thing at all — and then designed a community, with one rule-book for renouncers and a scaled-down one for householders, that has kept the experiment running for two and a half thousand years.
- In their words:
- "As a hero at the head of the battle is surrounded on all sides, so was there Mahāvīra. Bearing all hardships, the Venerable One, undisturbed, proceeded on the road to Nirvāṇa." (Ācārāṅga Sūtra, translated by Hermann Jacobi)
- If you remember one thing:
- The gentlest idea in Indian history — harm nothing, ever, even in thought — was proven livable by the hardest life in Indian history; and the community built around that proof still lights lamps for him every Diwali.