Mahavira's nirvana
Jain tradition holds that Mahavira, after some thirty years of teaching, spent his last rainy season at Pava, in the house of a local king, Hastipala. There, on the night of the new moon of the month of Karttika, he gave his last sermon and attained nirvana, final liberation from rebirth. The lamps lit by the assembled kings to mark the loss of the light of knowledge are said to be the origin of the Jain observance of Diwali. His chief disciple, Gautama Indrabhuti, is said to have attained omniscience the same night.
Shvetambara tradition also places an earlier and equally important event in the same region: Mahavira's first great assembly after his omniscience, at a place called Madhyama Pava, where eleven learned Brahmins, Indrabhuti among them, came to debate with him and became his disciples. They are the ganadharas, the chief disciples through whom the teaching was transmitted, so that Jain tradition connects Pava with both the beginning and the end of Mahavira's teaching.
The traditional Shvetambara date for the event is 527 BCE, from which the Vira era is counted. Digambara reckonings differ, and many modern scholars, following revisions of the Buddha's dates, place Mahavira's death later, in the fifth century BCE.
The identification
Early Buddhist texts also mention a town called Pava, belonging to the Malla people, where the Buddha took his last meal and fell ill. That Pava lay near Kushinagar, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, and some scholars have argued that Mahavira's Pava was the same place, identifying it with the area of Fazilnagar. Jain tradition, however, has long identified the site with Pavapuri in Bihar, close to Rajagriha, where Mahavira spent much of his life, and this is the place venerated by Jains of all communities. The question cannot be settled from the texts.
The temples
The Jal Mandir, "water temple", stands on an island in a large tank covered with lotuses, reached by a long stone causeway. It is built of white marble and marks the place where, by tradition, Mahavira's body was cremated; it is said that so many people took a pinch of earth from the site that the tank was formed. The Gaon Mandir, in the village, marks the place of his nirvana. Other temples and rest houses serve the pilgrims.
Pavapuri is one of the most important places of Jain pilgrimage in eastern India, with Rajgir, Kundalpur and Sammed Shikhar. At Diwali large numbers of Jains gather there to offer the nirvana laddu, a sweet, and to worship.
Further reading
- Dundas, Paul. The Jains. Routledge, 2002
- Jaini, Padmanabh S. The Jaina Path of Purification. Motilal Banarsidass, 1979
- Long, Jeffery D. Jainism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris, 2009
See also
- Mahavira — Mahavira was the twenty-fourth and last tirthankara of the present cycle in Jain tradition, an older contemporary of the Buddha whose teaching gave Jainism its historical form.
- Jainism — Jainism is an Indian religion holding that every living thing possesses an eternal soul bound by karma, and that liberation is reached through non-violence, self-restraint and ascetic discipline.
- Tirthankara — A tirthankara is, in Jain belief, a liberated teacher who establishes the ford across the ocean of rebirth, twenty-four of whom appear in each half-cycle of time.
- Diwali — Diwali, or Deepavali ("row of lamps"), is a five-day festival of lights observed by Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs across South Asia and its diaspora, marking, depending on tradition, the return of Rama to Ayodhya, the spiritual liberation of Mahavira, or the release of Guru Hargobind from imprisonment.
- Rajagriha — Rajagriha, modern Rajgir in Bihar, was the first capital of the kingdom of Magadha, a hill-girt city of the kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru where the Buddha and Mahavira both taught, and where the first Buddhist council was held.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.