Jainism

The 6th to 5th Centuries BC were a time of religious, political and social unrest in the Gangetic Basin. Wealth from agrarian development had led to increased population densities, and therefore new state formations. A general dissatisfaction with strict varna (caste) segregation and brahminical authority soon followed. Simply put, the newly monied merchant class was pissed at having to constantly pay for the endless and increasingly extravagant ritual services of arrogant brahmin priests.

A motley assortment of seers, prophets, holy and mad men wandered from town to town competing for converts. The Buddha was one of them. Another, Mahavira the "Great Hero", preached an extreme code of conduct focused on nonviolence and the sanctity of all life. Both shared a distrust for Vedic and Brahminical ritual, and both abbhorred the caste system. Mahavira's Jainism and the teaching of Buddha would define the new challenge to old-school Vedic religious hegemony for the next several centuries.

Jainism started as a puritanical backlash and, unlike Buddhism, was unable to shed its extreme roots. Jain faithful were required to go naked to prevent one's clothes from inadvertently crushing an insect. Similarly, mouth-coverings were (and still occasionally are) worn to prevent the slaughter of flying insects. The Jains met and influenced a few of Alexander the Great's men, giving rise to the notion of 'gymnosophists' or 'naked philosophers'.

Jain territory reached its furthest extent in South-Central India. There, on a hilltop, is the world's largest monolithic statue, sixty feet tall and carved from a single piece of stunning white granite. Fortunately for us, the Arab invasions never reached this far South, or the statue may have been destroyed like so many other temples and idols of the 'infidels'. The monolith is of the Jain saint Gomateshwara. Carved in the round, it is housed in a small and unremarkable temple that is totally outscaled by the statue itself. It's impossible to glimpse the entire figure until one enters the inner courtyard. Usually statues of this size are overbearing and dull; this one glowed, and were it not for the carved vines growing around the motionless saint's legs, could have hovered, weightless and perfect, like the idea of peace.