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Lord Mahavira some improvements on the doctrines of Parsvanatha. He was a reformer of an existing religion rather than the founder of it. He systematised and regularised the scattered doctrines of his predecessor and made some additions and alterations to them. He took Parsva's ideas of eternity of matter and the theory of selfcontrol or samyama and penance for liberation from karma. He also adopted Parsva's doctrine of the four vows and added to it the vow of chastity. While Parsvá asked his disciples to use white garments, Mahâvîra asked them to go without any garment. Mahâvîra also was convinced that through the three old paths, namely, right belief, right knowledge and right conduct, a man could attain siddhasisila, liberation from karma. He thought that austerity helped one to realise truth and so he recommended death even by starvation. He did not believe in the existence of God. He preached non-violence in the extreme form.
The Jaina teaching was at first preserved in an oral tradition, but in the third century B.C. it was collected and recorded, the final version being edited in the fifth century A.D. Jainism was atheistic in nature, the existence of God being irrelevant to its doctrine. The universe functions according to an eternal law and is continually passing through a series of cosmic waves of progress and decline. Everything in the universe, material or otherwise, has a soul. The purification of the soul is the purpose of the living, for the pure soul is released from the body and resides in bliss. Purification is not achieved through knowledge, as some of the Upanishadic teachers taught, knowledge being a relative quality only. This is explained by the famous story of the six blind men, each touching a different part of an elephant and insisting that what they touched was not an elephant but a rope, a snake, a tree trunk, and so on. Each man sees only a fraction of true knowledge, which makes knowledge unreliable for salvation. Aspects of Jain Philosophy Code of Morality
The Jaina philosopher makes a division of all that exists around him into two kinds—living and non-living. All the living beings are collectively called Jivas. When Jiva is individualised, it is called Atman. In this world Jiva is to be found in association with material forms. Karma is one of the subtle varieties of this
