The Jains of India are a relatively small section, about one-half of I per cent, of the Indian population. Yet they have exerted a significant influence on India's, and the world's, history. In ancient India, Buddhism and Brahmanism took up the characteristic Jain doctrines of ahimsā, non-violence and vegetarianism, and made them primary principles of Indian culture. In the medieval period, Jain practices and doctrines significantly affected major Hindu sects as well as quasi-Hindu ones, such as the Lingayats. In early modern and modern India, Jains have played a role in commercial and political life out of all proportion to their numbers. And through its indirect formative effect on Gandhi, Jainism has given the principle of non-violence to world culture.

For scholars, as for Jains themselves, the imaginative force of Jainism springs from two fundamental facts. First, Jain doctrine espouses an extraordinarily uncompromising and single-minded pursuit of individual asceticism. Jains are to avoid harm to even the smallest living thing, to purify themselves strenuously through self-mortification, and to conduct lives of strictest moral rectitude. These principles are embodied in those exemplary individuals, the ascetics, munis. Some go naked, while others wear face masks to avoid inhaling and killing the least insect. Many Jain laymen follow the ascetics' example by undertaking rigorous fasts. Both ascetics and laymen occasionally take a vow of self-starvation and die. Whatever complications and complexities are found to accompany Jain life, this individual asceticism remains a fundamental ideal and makes Jainism unusual, even in India.