Digging into Jain lore reveals that the Kalpa Sūtra traces back to Bhadrabāhu, celebrated as the last Shruta Kevalī whose memory bank contained every syllable of Mahāvīra’s teachings. Living in the shadows of Chandragupta Maurya’s court around the 3rd century BCE, Bhadrabāhu gathered and organized those oral traditions into a coherent guide—part inspiring biography of Mahāvīra, part practical rulebook for monks and nuns.

For centuries it survived purely by word of mouth, until the Śvetāmbara community decided the time had come to safeguard its wisdom in written form. That moment arrived at the Jain council of Vallabhi (in modern Gujarat) around 453–454 CE. Monks under the leadership of Guhāsena oversaw the painstaking transcription, and it’s thought that Devardhana Sūri—among others—penned the first manuscripts. From that point on, the Kalpa Sūtra became the cornerstone text of Śvetāmbara monastic life, studied in lantern-lit shrines and passed down through beautifully illustrated palm-leaf copies.

Fast-forward to today: digitization projects from Pune to Paris are breathing new life into these ancient pages. In 2024, the Bodleian Library unveiled a high-resolution scan of a Vallabhi-era copy, inviting scholars worldwide to crowdsource translations and preserve those faded ink strokes. So, while Bhadrabāhu’s original compilation took shape in the 3rd century BCE and the first ink hit palm leaves in the mid-5th century CE, its journey continues—proving that a text can be as timeless as the vows it enshrines.