Das Lakshana Parva and the Ten Virtues

Das Lakshana Parva is the ten-day festival observed chiefly by the Digambara Jain community during the bright fortnight of the month of Bhadrapada, immediately following the Svetambara Paryushana and usually falling in late summer. Its name means "ten characteristics," and the festival is built around the ten cardinal virtues of dharma, the qualities that describe the true nature of the liberated soul. These virtues are drawn from the Tattvartha Sutra, the concise scripture accepted across Jain traditions, where they are enumerated as the marks of righteous conduct.

Each of the ten days is dedicated to the contemplation of a single virtue, and each is prefixed with the word "uttama," meaning supreme, to signal that it is practised in its highest form by ascetics and to a lesser measure by householders. The ten are supreme forbearance or forgiveness, humility, straightforwardness, contentment or purity, truthfulness, self-restraint, austerity, renunciation, non-attachment, and celibacy. Together they form a portrait of a mind free from anger, pride, deceit and greed, the four passions that Jain teaching identifies as the roots of bondage.

Over the ten days devotees gather in temples to hear discourses from monks and learned teachers, each sermon exploring the meaning of the day's virtue and how it might be cultivated in ordinary life. Forgiveness teaches release from resentment, humility dissolves pride, straightforwardness removes crookedness of speech and dealing, and contentment quiets the endless reaching of desire. Truthfulness, restraint and austerity discipline the senses, while renunciation, non-attachment and celibacy loosen the grip of possession and craving. Understood together, the ten describe not a list of rules but the natural radiance of a soul that has cleared away obstruction.

The festival is marked by fasting, prayer and worship. Many devotees undertake fasts of varying severity, from taking a single meal a day to complete abstention, and the temple worship known as puja is performed with particular care. Scriptural study, or svadhyaya, is encouraged, and the reading of the Tattvartha Sutra holds a central place, since it is from this text that the ten virtues are drawn. Recitation of the Navkar Mantra and quiet meditation help devotees turn attention away from the outer world and toward the qualities of the soul.

Das Lakshana concludes with observances of forgiveness that echo the Svetambara Samvatsari. On the day following the festival, or on its final day, the Digambara community observes Kshamavani, the day of universal forgiveness, on which members seek and grant pardon for wrongs committed knowingly or unknowingly. The phrase Uttam Kshama, supreme forgiveness, both opens the festival and returns at its close, framing the entire observance within the practice of releasing grievance.

The festival's importance lies in its steady, methodical approach to self-improvement. Rather than concentrating devotion into a single climactic moment, it invites the community to dwell in turn on each facet of a virtuous life, giving the mind time to absorb and reflect. In this way Das Lakshana Parva serves as an annual course in the ethics of Jainism, reminding the community that liberation is approached not through ritual alone but through the patient cultivation of character. Its recurring return keeps the ten virtues vivid in the collective memory and offers each generation a renewed measure against which to weigh its conduct.