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Their Long History : 7 “Śrutakevalin” (those who had perfect knowledge of the oral tradition)
Under the reign of Emperor Candragupta Maurya (322-288 BC), the community of Jain monks in North India was led by Ācārya Bhadrabāhu. One version of history says he took the decision to go and meditate in Nepal, leaving the monks under the charge of Ācārya Sthūlibhadra. According to another version, owing to a great starvation in North India, Bhadrabāhu decided that his group of monks go with him to the South of India where an important Jain community was already established. He went in the region presently known as Karnataka state, to Shravana Belgola (the white lake of the ascetic), with 12,000 monks and the Emperor Candragupta he had converted to Jainism. The group remained there for twelve years. During their absence, Sthūlibhadra decided, around the year 312 BC, to convene a Council at Pāțalīputra (at that period capital of Magadha kingdom and now in the Indian state of Bihar) to make an inventory of the Jain tenets, whose exact contents seemed gradually lost.
When the ascetics who had travelled to the South came back to Northern India, without Bhadrabāhu and the Emperor Candragupta Maurya, who both had practiced the Jain rite of death by absolute fasting (sallekhanā), they saw that the monks who remained had abandoned nudity that Mahāvīra had preached for them. Moreover, they contested the written accounts of his teachings done during their absence. These facts, and some divergences of views between groups of ascetics, already at the origin of seven "little schisms”, brought about a "Great Schism" near 79-81 AD when Ācārya Vajrasena headed the community. This schism caused an irreversible division of Jainism in two great distinct sections of monks: those said to be “skyclad” (Digambara) i.e. nude and those to be said "white-clad" (Svetāmbara) i.e. wearing white robes. Some of the Jain laity followed the Digambara monks, others the Svetāmbara, with regard to their faith but without adopting their ideas about covering their bodies.
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