Thirteen Principles Give the Sect Its Name

The Svetambara Terapanth sect of Jainism was founded in 1760 in the Marwar region of Rajasthan by Acharya Bhikshu, a monk who had originally been ordained within the Sthanakvasi order, itself a Jain tradition that already rejected image worship. Bhikshu grew convinced that the Sthanakvasi monastic community of his day had grown lax in its discipline and inconsistent in its application of Jain ethical principles, and after failing to reform the practice from within, he left to found a new order built around a stricter and, in his view, more logically consistent application of Jain teaching. He organized his new order's discipline around thirteen core principles, grouped as five great vows, five rules of conduct, and three restraints, and it is this number, thirteen, tera in the local numbering, that gives the Terapanth its name, tera-panth, literally the path of thirteen. The reform was as much about consistency of ethical reasoning as about ritual practice: Bhikshu argued that certain common charitable acts, however well intentioned, could not be reconciled with a fully consistent doctrine of non-interference in the karmic consequences of others' actions, a position that set Terapanth apart from other Jain communities from its earliest years.