Mah[=a]v[=i]ra, the reputed founder of his sect, was, like Buddha and perhaps his other rivals, of aristocratic birth.  His father is called king, but he was probably hereditary chief of a district incorporated as a suburb of the capital city of Videha, while by marriage he was related to the king of Videha, and to the ruling house of M[=a]gadha.  His family name was Jn[=a]triputra, or, in his own Prakrit (Ardham[=a]gadh[=i]) dialect, N[=a]taputta; but by his sect he was entitled the Great Hero, Mah[=a]v[=i]ra; the Conqueror, Jina; the Great One, Vardham[=a]na (Vardahmana in the original), etc.  His sect was that of the Nirgranthas (Nigganthas), i.e., ‘without bonds,’ perhaps the oldest name of the whole body.  Later there are found no less than seven sub-sects, to which come as eighth the Digambaras, in contradistinction to all the seven Cvet[=a]mbara sects.  These two names represent the two present bodies of the church, one body being the Cvet[=a]mbaras, or ‘white-attire’ faction, who are in the north and west; the other, the Digambaras, or ‘sky-attire,’ i.e., naked devotees of the south.  The latter split off from the main body about two hundred years after Mah[=a]v[=i]ra’s death; as has been thought by some, because the Cvet[=a]mbaras refused to follow the Digambaras in insisting upon nakedness as the rule for ascetics.[6] The earlier writings show that nakedness was recommended, but was not compulsory.[7] Other designations of the main sects, as of the sub-sects, are found.  Thus, from the practice of pulling out the hairs of their body, the Jains were derisively termed Luncitakecas, or ‘hair-pluckers.’  The naked devotees of this school are probably the gymnosophists of the Greek historians, although this general term may have been used in describing other sects, as the practice of dispensing with attire is common even to-day with many Hindu devotees.[8]

An account of the Jain absurdities in the way of speculation would indeed give some idea of their intellectual frailty, but, as in the case of the Buddhists, such an account has but little to do with their religion.  It will suffice to state that the ‘ages’ of the Brahmans from whom Jain and Buddhist derived their general conceptions of the ages, are here reckoned quite differently; and that the first Jina of the long series of pre-historic prophets lived more than eight million years and was five hundred bow-lengths in height.  Monks and laymen now appear at large in India, a division which originated neither with Jain nor Buddhist,[9] though these orders are more clearly divided among the heretics, from whom, again, was borrowed by the Hindu sects, the monastic institution, in the ninth century (A.D.), in all the older heretical completeness.  Although atheistic the Jain worshipped the Teacher, and paid some regard to the Brahmanical divinities, just as he worships the Hindu gods to-day, for the atheistical systems admitted gods as demi-gods or dummy gods, and in point of fact became very superstitious.  Yet are both founder-worship and superstition rather the growth of later generations than the original practice.  The atheism of the Jain means denial of a divine creative Spirit.[10]