Mahavira and Jainism

Vardhamana, called Mahavira, leaves his noble family and, after long years of wandering and silence, begins to preach. The Jains themselves count him the twenty-fourth in a line of teachers, not the founder of a new faith. The core of the teaching is ahimsa, the refusal to harm any living being: monks strain their water, sweep the path before them, and do not plough the earth. To this are added truthfulness, the refusal to steal, and the renunciation of property. The Jain community is small, but it has existed without interruption to this day — and its thought on non-violence would later leave its mark on Gandhi.