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Lord Mahavira Varanasi (Kashi or Benaras) Bihar and West Bengal. The rulers of many eastern Gangetic states supported Jainism and encouraged the spread of Jainism contradictory versions exist about the time of birth and death of Mahâvîra. According to the latest data, he was born in 599 B.C., and died in 527 B.C. He was senior contemporary of Buddha, who was born in 528 B.C. and died (submerged in Nirvana) in 502 B.C. (Muni Shri Nagrajji. The contemporaneity and the chronology of Mahâvîra and Buddha, pp. 174-75). But the date of Mahâvîra is traced back to 477 and 487 B.C. (Bihar Through the Age, p. 128). The friendship of Mahávîra with Makhali Gosala, the head of Anti-Brahmin sect of Ajivikas who came from slave origin, speaks of the great liberalism of ancient Jainism and possibly of active counteraction to it.
Mahâvîra travelled with him for six years, preaching the truth about the futility of reliance on the posthumous life of the soul, about uselessness of sacrificial offerings and about the necessity for the ascetic to expose his body. This preaching was similar to the teaching of Ajivikas.
