Anuvrata means small vow. The word is the tradition’s own admission that the householder was never asked to keep the ascetic’s version. There are twelve vows for a lay Jain: five anuvratas, three gunavratas and four shikshavratas. This page names all twelve accurately, and then sets out a first step for each that a person with a job, a commute and a family can actually keep.
The first step is not the vow. That needs saying at the top, because the value of this page collapses if it is read as permission to do less. The vow is the vow, it is stated here in full, and it is what the tradition asks. The first step is what you climb from if you are currently doing nothing at all.
The word
Vrata is a vow. Anu is small, minute, partial. An anuvrata is the reduced form of a mahavrata, the great vow taken by an ascetic at ordination.
The five mahavratas are absolute: total non-violence, total truth, total non-stealing, total celibacy, total non-possession. They are undertaken without exception, without limit of time, and in three ways by three means, which includes not approving of the same act done by another.
The five anuvratas are the same five, bounded. The Sanskrit name of the first is sthula-pranatipata-viramana: abstention from gross injury to life. The word sthula, gross or coarse, is doing the work. A farmer tills soil, a householder cooks, a business injures beings simply by existing. The tradition did not pretend otherwise. It drew a line the householder could stand on, and named that line honestly as a smaller one.
This is the same realism visible in the samayik vow, where the householder’s Karemi Bhante deliberately omits the clause about approving of what others do, because a person inside a family and a trade cannot honestly undertake it.
The twelve, in three groups
| Group | Count | What the group does |
|---|---|---|
| Anuvrata | 5 | The five ethical commitments themselves, in bounded form |
| Gunavrata | 3 | Vows that shrink the field in which the five operate. Taken once, standing until revised |
| Shikshavrata | 4 | Vows of training. Practices repeated, not conditions maintained |
The distinction between the last two groups is easy to miss and worth holding: a gunavrata is a boundary you draw around your life, and a shikshavrata is something you do again and again. The fourth avashyak of a pratikraman runs through all twelve, along with the five standard aticharas, partial breaches, recorded for each.
The precedent for what this page is doing
In 1949, Acharya Tulsi of the Shvetambara Terapanth founded the Anuvrat Movement. He took the small vows out of their ritual setting entirely and offered them as a secular, non-sectarian code open to people of any religion or none: do not kill, do not lie in business, do not take or give bribes, do not practise untouchability, do not waste, keep away from intoxicants. No initiation, no sect, no liturgy. A stated limit, publicly taken.
That was a Jain acharya, not a reformer from outside, deciding that a small vow honestly kept was worth more than a large vow admired from a distance. Everything below follows that precedent. It is not a modern softening of the tradition. It is a use the tradition has already made of itself.
The five anuvratas
1. Ahimsa anuvrata
The vow. Sthula-pranatipata-viramana, abstention from gross injury to living beings. In practice the vow protects mobile beings, trasa jiva, those with two senses and above, from intentional harm, and it covers not doing it and not having it done. Injury to immobile one-sensed beings, unavoidable in agriculture, cooking and cleaning, is not licensed by this vow. It is acknowledged as harm that the householder’s state entails, which is why pratikraman retracts it rather than ignoring it.
A first step. Pick the one place in your week where you knowingly cause avoidable harm and close it. Not all of them. One. The glue trap you keep buying. The insect spray used when a glass and a piece of card would do. The tone you use when someone gets something wrong in front of others, because Jain doctrine counts bhava-himsa, the injury present in the intention, as bound karma whether or not the body ever moves.
2. Satya anuvrata
The vow. Sthula-mrishavada-viramana, abstention from gross falsehood. The classical aticharas are specific and commercial: false accusation, betraying a confidence, forging documents, giving false testimony, revealing what was said in trust between spouses. This vow was written for people who trade.
A first step. Two commitments, both testable by Friday. No number you state in a work context is one you have not verified. And when you do not know, the sentence is “I do not know,” not a plausible sentence that fills the silence.
3. Achaurya anuvrata
The vow. Sthula-adattadana-viramana, abstention from taking what is not given. Its aticharas reach further than theft: receiving stolen goods, using false weights and measures, adulterating goods, dealing in smuggled articles, and breaking the law of the state regarding property.
A first step. Anything billed to a client or an employer is time or material they actually received. Software you use is software you paid for. If the machine gives you extra change you give it back, and you notice how strong the argument for keeping it was, because that argument is the thing the vow is actually about.
4. Brahmacharya anuvrata
The vow. Sva-dara-santosha for a man, sva-pati-santosha for a woman: contentment with one’s own spouse, and abstention from all other sexual conduct. The ascetic’s version is complete celibacy. The householder’s version bounds it rather than abolishing it, and many observant families additionally keep celibacy on parva days and through chaumasa.
A first step. Fidelity in fact is the floor, and most people reading this already keep it. The step above it is fidelity of attention: what you consume privately, and whether the people you work with are being looked at as people. Bhava precedes dravya here as everywhere. The internal state binds first.
5. Aparigraha anuvrata
The vow. Parigraha-parimana, also called iccha-parimana, the limiting of desire. The householder fixes a ceiling: on land and buildings, on gold and silver, on wealth and grain, on servants and animals, on household goods. Not renunciation of property. A stated, numbered limit, above which acquisition stops. The aticharas are the ways people quietly exceed a limit they have set, including transferring the excess into a family member’s name and calling the limit kept.
A first step. Set one ceiling this month and write it down, because an unwritten limit is not a limit. A number for the wardrobe. A number for devices. A rupee figure above which a purchase waits thirty days. Then notice what happens in you as you approach the ceiling, because the vow is aimed at iccha, the wanting, and not at the object.
Our first mission argues that Jains should be visible, and a reasonable objection is that visible objects sit badly with aparigraha. They do not conflict. A murti or a dhaaga is not accumulation. A ceiling on accumulation is what this vow asks for, and it asks for a specific number rather than a general sentiment.
The three gunavratas
6. Digvrata
The vow. A lifetime limit on movement in the directions. The householder fixes how far he will travel, north, south, east, west, up and down, and beyond that boundary all activity ceases, which means all karma-binding activity beyond it ceases too. The logic is exact: the ethical field is reduced by reducing the geographical one.
A first step. The modern equivalent of unlimited travel is unlimited reach. Fix a boundary on where your attention is allowed to go: which apps, which hours, which arguments. The classical vow shrinks the world you can act in so that there is less of it to harm. The same arithmetic applies to a feed.
7. Bhogopabhoga-parimana
The vow. A limit on things consumed once, bhoga, such as food, and on things used repeatedly, upabhoga, such as clothing and vehicles. It has two halves. One limits the objects. The other, taken with respect to karma in the sense of occupation, limits the trades a Jain may follow, and the classical literature names fifteen forbidden livelihoods, the karmadana, including those built on felling forests, on charcoal, on trade in animals, on selling poison, and on running mills and presses that grind life.
A first step. Choose a fixed number of items you will consume in a day and hold it, which is the classical practice of numbering one’s food at its smallest. Then read the fifteen karmadana once, honestly, against what you do for a living, and if your work does not sit cleanly inside them, say so out loud rather than deciding the list is medieval. Naming it is the vow’s real work. Denying it is maya-shalya.
8. Anarthadanda-viramana
The vow. Abstention from purposeless harm: harm that gains you nothing. The classical literature gives four kinds. Apadhyana, brooding on harm to others. Papopadesha, advising or instructing others in harmful action. Himsa-pradana, supplying the instruments of harm. Pramada-charita, careless destructive activity done out of idleness.
A first step. This is the most modern vow in the list and the easiest one to break before breakfast. Purposeless harm is the argument you join that has nothing to do with you, the rumour you pass on, the pile-on you add one line to, the hour spent watching someone be humiliated. None of it profits you. That is precisely what makes it anartha.
The four shikshavratas
9. Samayika
The vow. Forty-eight minutes of equanimity, taken as a formal vow with a stated beginning and end. It is the first of the six avashyaks and the practice most often recommended when someone asks what to actually do. We have written it up in full.
A first step. If forty-eight minutes is not available, the tradition’s own structure still applies at a smaller scale: a bounded period, entered deliberately and released deliberately. Our one-minute practice is that shape at its minimum. It is not a samayik, and this page will not call it one.
10. Desavakasika
The vow. A tightening of the digvrata for a stated shorter period. The lifetime boundary is large; for today, or for this month, you draw it much smaller.
A first step. One day a week on which you do not travel for anything optional, do not order anything, and do not transact. A stated day, decided in advance, not a day that happens to turn out quiet.
11. Paushadhopavasa
The vow. Living as an ascetic lives, for a day and a night. Fasting, ordinary comforts set aside, business suspended, commonly kept on the eighth and fourteenth of the fortnight and often in an upashraya. This is the vow in which a householder takes up the monastic life for twenty-four hours.
A first step. Keep one pachkhan properly instead of keeping none. Navkarsi, no food or water until forty-eight minutes after sunrise, is the smallest of them, and it is a real vow with a real time attached, computable for your own city on our Jain Panchang. Chauvihar, nothing after sunset, is the next. A kept navkarsi outranks an intended paushadha.
12. Atithi-samvibhaga
The vow. Samvibhaga means sharing out. Food prepared for the household is offered to an ascetic guest before the household eats. The word for the recipient is atithi, one who arrives without an appointed day. The vow is not charity in the modern sense; it is the householder’s economy being made to serve the ascetic one.
A first step. Give first and eat after, in whatever form is available to you. A fixed portion of income, moved on the day it arrives rather than out of whatever is left at month end. Food given before your own meal rather than after. The order matters more than the amount, because the order is what the vow is about.
Where the traditions differ
The twelve are common ground. The grouping of the last seven is not, and flattening it would be dishonest.
| Shvetambara enumeration | Digambara enumeration | |
|---|---|---|
| Gunavratas | Digvrata, bhogopabhoga-parimana, anarthadanda-viramana | Digvrata, desavrata, anarthadanda-viramana |
| Shikshavratas | Samayika, desavakasika, paushadhopavasa, atithi-samvibhaga | Samayika, proshadhopavasa, bhogopabhoga-parimana, atithi-samvibhaga |
| Principal source | Upasakadashanga, and Tattvartha Sutra chapter seven in the Shvetambara recension | Tattvartha Sutra chapter seven in the Digambara recension, and Samantabhadra’s Ratnakaranda Shravakachara |
The same twelve items appear on both lists. Whether limiting consumption is a boundary drawn once or a discipline repeated, and whether the shorter-term spatial limit belongs among the boundaries or among the practices, is where the two traditions read the structure differently. Neither is a corruption of the other.
Sthanakvasi and Terapanth practice follows the Shvetambara enumeration. The Terapanth is also the tradition of Acharya Tulsi, which is worth noticing: the sect that produced the twentieth century’s most deliberate restatement of these vows in plain modern terms was not a lax one.
Both traditions additionally recognise sallekhana, the vow taken at the end of life, which stands outside the twelve rather than among them. We have written about it separately on santhara.
A staircase, not a substitute
Three things have to be true at once, and this page is only honest if it holds all three.
The vow is the vow. Nothing above lowers what the tradition asks. The twelve are stated here as the texts state them, with their real names, and a person who takes one formally has done something that a person keeping a private approximation has not.
A first step is genuinely worth something. Jain karma theory is not a pass or a fail. Bhava, the internal state, precedes dravya, the material act, in binding karma, and a limit sincerely set and kept does real work regardless of its size. It is the same doctrine that explains why a large vow taken for reputation does so little, which is why “undertaking the vow for reputation” sits in the classical list of the faults of samayik.
And the step must not be mistaken for the stair. If you keep a first step for a year and never once look up at the vow above it, this page has done you harm. The intended use is: keep the small thing, keep it until it is unremarkable, then take the real one from a teacher, formally, in the tradition’s own words.
Nobody is grading this. Jainism has no creator god, no saviour and no intercessor. Nothing here is asked of a deity and nothing is granted by one. The account is yours, and the entries are made by you.
The honest difficulties
Nobody can keep aparigraha in a market economy. True, and the vow does not ask you to. It asks for a stated ceiling, which is a smaller and far more uncomfortable request, because a ceiling can be checked and a general disposition toward simplicity cannot.
Some of the fifteen karmadana describe ordinary modern employment. Also true, and the answer is not to reinterpret the list until it fits. Name where you stand relative to it, and keep the naming honest. That is the whole of Mission 2.
Formal vow-taking usually needs an ascetic. In most sanghs a vow is taken from a sadhu or sadhvi, which is a real barrier for a family with no ascetic nearby. The Anuvrat Movement’s answer, a vow stated publicly and plainly without liturgy, remains available and remains Jain.
The list is long and the temptation is to take all twelve badly. The traditional counsel runs the other way. One vow, kept exactly, with its aticharas known and reviewed, is the unit of progress here.
Frequently asked questions
↳ What does anuvrata mean?
Anuvrata means small vow: anu, small or partial, and vrata, vow. The five anuvratas are the householder's bounded form of the five mahavratas taken absolutely by ascetics. Their Sanskrit names include the word sthula, gross or coarse, so the first is abstention from gross injury rather than from all injury. The reduction is the tradition's own, and it is stated openly in the vow's own name.
↳ What are the twelve vows of a Jain householder?
Five anuvratas: limited non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, contentment with one's own spouse, and a stated limit on possessions. Three gunavratas, which bound the field of activity: a limit on movement in the directions, a limit on things consumed and used, and abstention from purposeless harm. Four shikshavratas, which are repeated practices: samayika, a shorter-term tightening of the spatial limit, living as an ascetic for a day and night, and sharing food with an ascetic guest before eating. The Shvetambara and Digambara traditions group the last seven differently while listing the same twelve items.
↳ What was the Anuvrat Movement?
A movement founded in 1949 by Acharya Tulsi of the Jain Shvetambara Terapanth, which took the small vows out of their ritual setting and offered them as a secular, non-sectarian ethical code open to anyone of any religion or none. Its pledges covered killing, honesty in business, bribery, untouchability, waste and intoxicants, and it required no initiation and no liturgy. It is the strongest precedent within the tradition for stating these vows in modern terms.
↳ Is a small vow enough?
It is worth something real, and it is not the whole thing, and both halves of that need saying. Jain karma theory holds that bhava, the internal state, precedes dravya, the material act, in binding karma, so a small limit sincerely kept does genuine work. But a first step is a step and not a substitute for the vow above it, and treating it as a ceiling is how a practice quietly stops. The intended sequence is to keep the small thing until it is unremarkable, then take the formal vow.
↳ Do I need a monk to take a vow?
For a formal vow in most sanghs, yes: it is taken from a sadhu or sadhvi, and that formality is part of what makes it a vow rather than an intention. A limit you set and record for yourself is still real and still binds karma by its bhava, but it should be described accurately as what it is. The public, liturgy-free pledge used by the Anuvrat Movement is a recognised middle form, and it came from an acharya.
↳ What is the difference between a gunavrata and a shikshavrata?
A gunavrata is a boundary drawn around the field in which the five anuvratas operate, taken once and standing until revised: how far you will travel, what you will consume, what purposeless harm you renounce. A shikshavrata is a vow of training, a practice repeated rather than a condition maintained: samayika, the shorter-term spatial limit, living as an ascetic for a day, and sharing with an ascetic guest. The Shvetambara and Digambara enumerations disagree about which of the two groups two of these items belong to.
Related
- Our missions: Jainism without denial
- Maya-shalya: why concealing a lapse is the graver problem
- The one-minute practice, for people who cannot do a full pratikraman
- Samayik: the ninth of the twelve vows, in full
- Pratikraman: the review in which all twelve vows are gone through
- Michhami Dukkadam: what the words actually mean
- Kshamavani Parva: the Digambara day of forgiveness
- Jain Panchang: pachkhan times for your city
Sources. The twelve householder vows and the five standard aticharas of each follow Tattvartha Sutra chapter seven and the Upasakadashanga; the Digambara enumeration follows the Digambara recension of the same chapter and Samantabhadra's Ratnakaranda Shravakachara. The divergence in grouping the last seven vows is reported as a genuine difference between the two traditions and not as an error in either. The fifteen karmadana are described by category and not listed in full. The Anuvrat Movement is dated to 1949 and attributed to Acharya Tulsi of the Shvetambara Terapanth. The distinction between bhava and dravya in the binding of karma follows standard Jain karma theory. Everything under the heading "a first step" is our own application, is not scripture, and is offered as a way onto the vow rather than as a replacement for it. Corrections are seva: tell us.