Mahavira, born as Prince Vardhamana in Kundagrama in a royal Kshatriya household to King Siddhartha and Queen Trishala, grew up amid comfort and status, yet developed a deep inner detachment from worldly life. He married Yashoda, and a daughter, Priyadarshana, was born to them, but the death of his parents intensified his sense that royal life could not satisfy the soul’s deeper yearning. At about the age of thirty, having obtained the consent of his elder brother Nandivardhana, he resolved to renounce, relinquishing wealth, family ties, and social position in order to seek spiritual liberation. This decision, as preserved in the Jain tradition, marks the turning point from princely life to the path of a wandering ascetic. The act of renunciation itself was both outwardly dramatic and inwardly radical. Mahavira gave away his possessions, removed his ornaments and garments, and is said to have plucked out his hair by his own hands in a ritual known as keś‑loch, symbolizing a complete break with vanity and attachment. He took upon himself the great vows in their most rigorous form: non‑violence, truthfulness, non‑stealing, celibacy, and non‑attachment to possessions. Casting aside clothing and living nude, he embraced a life in which even the smallest comfort was viewed as a potential fetter, and every action was to be weighed against the ideal of harmlessness. For approximately twelve years, Mahavira wandered as an itinerant ascetic through the regions of northern India, practicing intense austerities and meditation. He undertook long fasts, sometimes accepting alms only after several days, and meditated in forests, cremation grounds, and other solitary places, often in difficult postures and in silence. During these years he endured heat, cold, hunger, insults, and physical abuse, as well as dangers from animals and insects, yet is portrayed as maintaining equanimity and refusing to retaliate. His observance of non‑violence extended to the most minute forms of life, and through this disciplined restraint he is said to have gradually shed the passions and karmic bonds that obscure the soul’s innate clarity. After twelve years and some months of such tapas, while meditating under a śāla tree near Jrimbhikagrama on the bank of the Rijupalika river, Mahavira attained kevala‑jñāna, perfect and infinite knowledge. At about forty‑two years of age he thus became a kevalin, a Tirthankara, one who has crossed the stream of birth and death and can show others the ford. From that time for roughly three