Jainism
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50 free Jainism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jainism is one of the oldest living religions, born in ancient India and followed today by several million people. Its central idea is simple to state and hard to live: cause as little harm as possible to any living thing. That one principle shapes what Jains eat, how their monks and nuns travel, and even how they think about truth itself. This quiz covers the ground a world religions class would: the line of great teachers called Tirthankaras, the vows and beliefs at the heart of the faith, the two main monastic traditions, the major festivals and scriptures, and the temples and pilgrimage sites that draw visitors from across India and beyond. Every question is multiple choice and comes with its answer and a short explanation. It is written for students revising Jainism, for Jain families who want a quiz game to play together, and for anyone curious about a faith they have heard of but never studied.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which foods do observant Jains refuse because each one is believed to house countless tiny souls in a single body?
Root vegetables
Root vegetables such as potatoes, onions, garlic and carrots are ruled out, so Jain cooks in Gujarat and Rajasthan built whole cuisines without them.
Q 02In the parable Jains use to show that truth has many sides, which animal do blind men describe by touch?
An elephant
An elephant seems like a thick snake to the man holding the trunk, a fan to the one at the ear and a pillar to the one at the leg.
Q 03Which leader of India's independence movement called the Jain poet Shrimad Rajchandra his guide in spiritual crisis?
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi met the poet in Mumbai in 1891 and kept writing to him from South Africa, where he was advised to be patient and to study Hinduism deeply.
Q 04Many observant Jains will not eat after which daily moment, a practice meant to spare tiny organisms from harm?
Sunset
Sunset is the cut-off in a practice called chauvihar, and strict Jains filter their drinking water for the same reason.
Q 05What do Jain monks and nuns carry so that they crush no insects where they walk or sit?
A soft broom
A soft broom is among the few things an ascetic may keep, and some orders make theirs from peacock feathers that the birds have shed naturally.
Q 06Which autumn festival, also kept by Hindus, marks for Jains the night the 24th Tirthankara attained final liberation?
Diwali
Diwali has a second meaning for Jains: the teacher's chief disciple, Gautama, is said to have gained omniscience that same night.
Q 07Which Sanskrit word, written on the raised open palm in Jain symbolism, names the vow never to harm any living being?
Ahimsa
Ahimsa sits inside a wheel on the palm, and the wheel stands for the resolve to end the cycle of rebirth by never causing harm.
Q 08Which teacher, a contemporary of the Buddha, do Jains revere as the 24th and last Tirthankara of the present age?
Mahavira
Mahavira left a royal household at 30 to live as a wandering ascetic, and scholars see him as the reformer of an older tradition, not its founder.
Q 09In Jainism, during which season do wandering monks and nuns stay in one place for four months to avoid crushing insects?
The monsoon
The monsoon retreat, called chaturmas, exists because the rains bring out small creatures that a monk walking the roads could kill by accident.
Q 10Which Mughal emperor, persuaded by the Jain monk Hiravijaya, banned the slaughter of animals for months of the year?
Akbar
Akbar invited the monk to his court for philosophical debate, and the edicts that followed also banned fishing in certain sacred lakes.
Q 11Monks of which Jain sect, whose name means sky-clad, traditionally own nothing and wear no clothes at all?
Digambara
Digambara monks carry little beyond a water gourd, while the other main tradition holds that an ascetic need not go naked.
Q 12Who, said to have meditated standing until vines climbed his legs, is shown in the giant statue at Shravanabelagola?
Bahubali
Bahubali is bathed only once every 12 years, when pilgrims pour milk, saffron and sugarcane juice over the single-block granite figure.
Q 13Which Gujarat town, below a hill crowded with Jain temples, became the world's first legally vegetarian city?
Palitana
Palitana banned the sale of meat, fish and eggs in 2014; its marble temples cover Shatrunjaya hill, counted among the holiest sites in Jainism.
Q 21Which annual Jain festival of fasting and study lasts eight days for Svetambaras and ends on a day of forgiveness?
Paryushana
Paryushana means abiding and coming together; the other main sect follows it with a ten-day festival of its own, built around ten virtues.
Q 22Which Prakrit phrase do Jains say to friends and relatives at the close of their annual fast to ask forgiveness?
Micchami Dukkadam
Micchami Dukkadam literally means 'may all the evil that has been done be in vain', and monks also use it in their regular rite of confession.
Q 23Which Jain term names the omniscience that a soul is said to gain once every obscuring particle is shed?
Kevala jnana
Q 14Which Jain vow, taken only near the end of life, involves gradually giving up food and water until death?
Sallekhana
Sallekhana was banned as suicide by the Rajasthan High Court in August 2015, but India's Supreme Court stayed that ruling within weeks and lifted the ban.
Q 15Which Jain doctrine, whose name means many-sidedness, holds that no single statement can capture the whole of reality?
Anekantavada
Anekantavada led Jain thinkers to treat every claim as valid only in some respect, one perspective that is always incomplete.
Q 16In Jain belief, what is pictured as extremely subtle matter that seeps into the soul and stains it with colour?
Karma
Karma is far more than cause and effect in Jainism: it is treated as a kind of pollution, drawn in by every act, word and thought.
Q 17Which ancient symbol do Jains use to stand for the four states a soul can be born into?
A swastika
A swastika's arms stand for heavenly beings, humans, hellish beings and animals or plants, and a crescent drawn above it marks liberation.
Q 18Which Tirthankara, the 23rd, is shown beneath a canopy of serpent hoods and is widely accepted as a historical figure?
Parshvanatha
Parshvanatha is the earliest Tirthankara that historians accept as real, and legend says a serpent god shielded him from rains sent to break his meditation.
Q 19Which first Tirthankara, also called Adinatha, has a bull as his emblem and is said to have taught people farming?
Rishabhanatha
Rishabhanatha is said to have taught six professions, among them farming, writing and trade, once the wish-granting trees of an easier age began to fail.
Q 20Which 19th Tirthankara does the Svetambara tradition hold to have been a woman, a claim the other main sect rejects?
Mallinatha
Mallinatha is known in that tradition as Mallivati; the rival view is that a woman must first be reborn as a man before she can reach liberation.
Kevala jnana is held to be a natural quality of every soul, merely masked for now, and the 24 great teachers are those who uncovered it.
Q 24Right faith and right knowledge are two of the Three Jewels of Jainism; the third is right what?
Conduct
Conduct completes the trio that Jains call the path to liberation; the better-known Buddhist list of 'rights' runs to eight.
Q 25Which of the five great Jain vows means non-attachment to possessions and leads some monks to own nothing at all?
Aparigraha
Aparigraha binds householders too, as a vow to limit both their possessions and their desires.
Q 26The word Jain comes from the Sanskrit jina, a title given to the Tirthankaras; what does jina mean?
Conqueror
Conqueror is the meaning, though the battle is an inner one: a jina has defeated the passions and bodily desires, not an army.
Q 27What does the title Tirthankara, given to the 24 great teachers of Jainism, literally mean?
Ford-maker
Ford-maker fits because a tirtha is a shallow place where water can be crossed, and each of the 24 teachers is said to open one for others to follow.
Q 28Which Indian emperor is said in Jain tradition to have left his throne and fasted to death as a monk?
Chandragupta Maurya
Chandragupta Maurya is said to have left the empire to his son and lived out his years as an ascetic on a hill now named Chandragiri after him.
Q 29In which present-day Indian state was the 24th Tirthankara born, in a village called Kundagrama in the Videha kingdom?
Bihar
Bihar holds his birthplace, though scholars still dispute exactly where in the state the village of Kundagrama stood.
Q 30Which animal is the emblem of the 24th Tirthankara, placed beneath his statues to tell him apart from the others?
A lion
A lion sits beneath his image, and Jain texts say that he was himself born as one in an earlier life.