- Mahavira was the twenty-fourth tirthankara. Jainism is closely associated with Vardhamana Mahavira, who lived from 540 to 468 B.C. and established the central doctrines of Jainism. He was born in Northern India, in the town of Vyshali, into a royal family.
- His father was Siddhartha Maharaja who ruled Kundapura, and his mother was Priyakarini. Vardhamana lived as a householder for thirty years. At the age of thirty he left his wife, child, and family and started a life of total renunciation and asceticism.
- Mahavira passed twelve years of his ascetic life with equanimity, performing hard and long penances, and enduring all afflictions and calamities with an undisturbed mind. At the end, the ascetic obtained omniscience; he became jina, the victorious and Mahavira, the great hero.
- He realized his true self and attained omniscience by practising rigorous austerities and penances. He understood the nature of physical bondage and ways of achieving total liberation from bondage, and thus, liberation from rebirth and bodily existence.
- The ideal state of freedom can be achieved only through a radial ascetical life, the essence of which is total renunciation of all bodily comforts and all material objects.
- He says, “It is owing to attachment that a person commits violence, utters lies, commits theft, indulges in sex, and develops a yearning for unlimited hoarding.” (Bhakta-Parijna).
- Modern Jains believe that his message is full of pragmatic optimism, self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-purification to develop the inherent and infinite potentialities of the human self.
- A glimpse into his life shows that he was an embodiment of non-violence and compassion. He taught five great vows and initiated many people into this way of life, established the four fold order, (monks, nuns, male lay-votaries and female votaries.) and emerged a teacher of many monks, a renowned preacher, and a founder of a new religion.
- Lord Mahavira passed the last thirty years of his life as the omniscient tirthankara. By the time of his death at the age of seventy- two, a large group of people embraced this new faith.
- Mahavira’s close disciples led the movement after his death, and Jainism spread from the north-east of India to the north-west and even to the south, especially to the present day state of Karnataka.