Jain accounts of the schism's origin vary, but a widely repeated tradition connects it to a severe famine, sometimes dated around the fourth or third century BCE, that scattered the monastic community and disrupted the oral transmission of scripture. One group of monks, the tradition holds, migrated south and maintained stricter ascetic discipline including nudity, while those who remained in the north gradually adopted white robes as circumstances required, with the two groups growing apart over subsequent centuries until the divergence hardened into a formal schism.
Historians generally treat this famine narrative as a later community explanation for a separation that in fact developed gradually over a much longer period, shaped by regional distance, differing teacher lineages and accumulating differences in practice rather than by any single decisive break. The traditional date often cited for the schism, the first century CE, marks roughly when the division had become clear and named in surviving sources, not necessarily when it began.
Despite centuries of separate development, doctrinal disagreement and, at times, real communal tension, Digambara and Svetambara Jains share core commitments, above all non-violence, ahimsa, and reverence for the same lineage of Tirthankaras, and continue to recognize each other as fellow Jains even while maintaining separate institutions, temples and monastic orders.