The word Jain is derived from jina, which means spiritual victor or liberator. The jina were twenty-four saints or teachers in the remote past. The last of these teachers, Mahavira who lived in the 6th century BC, was a contemporary of the Buddha and is considered to be the founder of Jain.

Jains do not believe in a Supreme Being or creator, but rather in the existence of a soul in every living being. Passions such as greed and hatred make this soul vulnerable to the effects of former deeds, called karma, and lock it into an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Jains believe that release from this cycle is achieved through asceticism and meditation. The highest ideal in Jainism is the ascetic: a homeless wanderer without passion or possession. A Jain ascetic who has left the world gives up every material thing, sometimes including clothes, and plucks the hairs from his head in a painful demonstration of renunciation. Most Jains do not go to this extreme, but they honor the ascetic as a model of perfection.

At the core of Jainism is a doctrine which prohibits killing, violence or injury to any living thing. Certain Jain monks and nuns demonstrate this reverence for all life by wearing cloth masks over their faces to prevent them from accidentally inhaling tiny flying insects and sweeping the ground in front of them to avoid crushing any living organism under their feet.

Tranquility is the prevailing sentiment in Jain art and iconography. An image of a Jina does not represent a god but is instead a reminder of an ideal. Jina are always portrayed as beggars or ascetics and are always shown in one of two positions: either seated in the classic lotus position of meditation or standing as solid or erect as a stone column, a position that signifies "non-movement" or total abandonment of the world. A diamond-shaped emblem called a srivatsa is seen on the chest of all Jina figures. It means "Beloved of Fortune" and is one of the few ways to identify a Jina from other figures.

Jainism developed in India but never spread beyond its borders, due in part to a rule, which forbade Jain monks from travelling more than one day in a boat. Despite this, Jainism survived in India while Buddhism died out. Today Jainism remains one of the world's largest religions with some six million followers.