Jain Gyan

Everyday practice

Pachchakhan, ayambil, the rule against eating after dark and the kandmul question — what each one actually asks of you.

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Many people reading this are younger members of a Jain family trying to understand what is happening in their own house, rather than looking for instruction. So everything here says what the practice is and why, without telling anybody what to do — and where the sources themselves say that most lay Jains do not keep the strictest form, so does this page.

Pachchakhan

What a pachchakhan is

Sanskrit pratyakhyana, Prakrit paccakkhana, and in ordinary speech pachkhan. It means the renunciation of evil deeds, either sakara — with stated exceptions — or anakara, absolute. Its function is to stop asrava, the inflow of karma. A vow of this kind is not a rule imposed from outside; it is taken, for a stated length of time, and it can be taken for the next forty-eight minutes as readily as for a year.

A small difference worth knowing: among the six avashyakas, pratyakhyana is the fifth for Digambars and the sixth for Shwetambars — the two traditions reverse kayotsarga and pratyakhyana. Durations follow the pratikramana cycle: daivasika or ratrika for a day, pakshika for fifteen days, chaturmasika for four months, samvatsarika for a year.

The ten pratyakhyanas
#	Shwetambar	Digambar	What it means
1	Anagata	Anagata	An austerity kept ahead of its time — a chaudas fast taken on teras — in order to serve elders or gurus.
2	Atikranta	Atikranta	Kept later than its time, for the same reason.
3	Koti-sahita	Kotisahita	Immediately repeating or joining the same austerity.
4	Niyantrita	Nikhanditadiffers	Completing a long-fixed austerity despite obstacles such as illness.
5	Sakara	Sakara	With the standard permitted exceptions, the agars.
6	Anakara	Anakara	With no exceptions.
7	Parimana-krita	Parimanagatadiffers	Numerical limits — on donors, on morsels, on houses for gochari. Chiefly monastic.
8	Niravashesha	Aparisheshadiffers	Without remainder — total renunciation of all four aharas.
9	Sanketa	Adhvagatadiffers	The Shwetambar ninth is the vow held until a sign: a thumb kept folded, a fist closed, a knot tied, reaching home, perspiration drying, a wet vessel drying, a lamp going out. The Digambar list has this and the tenth in the opposite order.
10	Addha	Sahetukadiffers	The vow limited by time — forty-eight minutes after sunrise, one or two or three porisi, ekasana, ayambil, upavasa, or giving up vigai. This is the one most lay Jains actually keep, and the timings below are its forms.

The timing vows

Navkarsi, porisi and the rest

One prahar is a quarter of the daylight — sunset minus sunrise, divided by four. It changes with the season: at the equinox it is about three hours, and on a twelve-and-a-half-hour day it is three hours and seven and a half minutes. One ghadi is twenty-four minutes. Always compute from your own city’s actual sunrise and sunset; the hour figures below are orientation only.

Navkarsi
Namukkāra-sahiyaṃ
sunrise + 48 minutes
Forty-eight minutes — two ghadi — after sunrise. Fold the hands, recite three Navkar, and only then take food or water. A pastoral note worth keeping: if one cannot wait the forty-eight minutes, one may break the fast immediately after sunrise.
Porisi
Porisiṃ
sunrise + 1 prahar
One prahar after sunrise — about three hours on a twelve-hour day. The word is from Pauruṣī: when one’s shadow equals one’s height.
Sadh-porisi
Sāḍḍhaporisiṃ
sunrise + 1.5 prahar
One and a half prahar — about four and a half hours.
Purimaddha
Purimaḍḍhaṃ
sunrise + 2 prahar
Two prahar — about six hours. From purva-ardha, the first half of the day. ★ One widely-cited temple page lists this as three prahar, the same as Avaddha. That is an error; it is two.
Avaddha
Avaḍḍhaṃ
sunrise + 3 prahar
Three prahar — about nine hours; more than half the day.

Ekasana is one meal a day; biyasana is two. Both are taken seated, with agars that permit stretching the limbs and rising for a preceptor. Nivi is food free of all vigai.

Today's times for the reference city

The four aharas

Chauvihar, tivihar, duvihar

Asanaṃ — aśana: Staples.
Panaṃ — pāna: All drinks.
Khaimaṃ — khādima: Things munched — fruit, popcorn, dry fruits, sweets.
Saimaṃ — svādima: End-of-meal items, essentially mukhvas — cloves, cardamom, betel nut, pan.

★ These three words are used in two different registers, and a page that does not say which it means will confuse everybody. In the text of the pachchakhan itself, chauvihar renounces all four aharas and permits nothing; tivihar renounces asana, khadima and svadima, so water is permitted; duvihar renounces asana and khadima, so water and svadima are permitted. There is no one-item pachchakhan. In ordinary evening speech, chauvihar means no food or water after sunset until at least Navkarsi the next morning — many stop food and water forty-eight minutes before sunset; tivihar means no food after sunset with water permitted; duvihar permits water, milk and medicine and is usually taken by someone unwell. Panahar is renunciation of water in the evening after a day’s fast. Divasa-charimam, "the last part of the day", in practice now runs until the next morning.

Ayambil

No taste, rather than no food

The best one-line description of it is the Oshwal Association’s: upvas is "no food"; ayambil is "no taste". Sanskrit acamla or acamamla, dry food without ghee or dressing; Prakrit ayambila. Doctrinally it is an external austerity, bahya tapa, under rasa-parityaga. The category being set aside is vigai — milk, yogurt, ghee, oil, sugar, jaggery, fried food. The four maha-vigai — butter, honey, meat and alcohol — are forbidden lifelong and are a separate matter.

One meal a day, seated, completed within forty-eight minutes. Boiled water only — cooled and sieved — drinkable from forty-eight minutes after sunrise until sunset.

Not permitted

All dairy — milk, curd, cheese, paneer; ghee, oil, butter; sugar and jaggery; honey; fried food; all fruit and vegetables, green, fresh or dried; tea, coffee and beverages; chilli, turmeric, coriander-cumin, cumin and spices.

Permitted

Plain boiled grain and pulses — wheat, rice, green gram, chickpea, urad dal and their flours; chapati, rice, idli and dosa if made without oil, ghee or butter.

★ Salt is the one point on which sources genuinely disagree, so we state no single rule. One reference work allows salt, black pepper, asafoetida powder and baking soda. A community source says some use salt while preparing the meal but not as a condiment, and that strict followers do not consume salt at all. A third omits the question entirely. Ask in your own ayambil shala.

After sunset

Ratri-bhojana tyaga

In the Shwetambar canon it is the sixth vow — ratri-bhojana-vrata, at Sutrakritanga 1.2.3.3, with the full formula at Dashavaikalika chapter 4: I shall not eat at night, nor cause others to, nor allow others to. Whether it sits inside ahimsa or stands separately is debated within the tradition. Digambar manuals press harder: Chamundaraya makes it a sixth anu-vrata, Sakalakirti follows him, and Amritachandra gives it a sixth-vow position — though it never gained general recognition and no aticara pentad exists for it. R. Williams states outright that the Shwetambaras seem not to lay quite as much stress on it as the Digambaras. In both traditions it is formally located in the pratimas: the fifth is Sacitta Tyaga — green leaves and shoots, roots and tubers, unboiled water — and the sixth is Ratri-bhukti Tyaga. Digambar monks observe it more strictly still, by eating only once a day.

The four reasons, given as the texts give them

Invisible beings: Minute beings at night that would be consumed unseen. Amritachandra, Purusharthasiddhyupaya 132.
Attachment: The same verse also says that raga is always more intense in eating by night. This half is usually dropped online; it belongs.
Compassion: Samantabhadra, Ratnakaranda-shravakachara v.21: abandonment of the fourfold aliments by night out of compassion.
Physiology and practicality: Digestion is held to be inactive without sunlight; and historically, alms-seeking in the dark was simply dangerous.

Root vegetables

Kandmul and anantkay

Plants — vanaspati-kayika — are one-sensed beings. A pratyeka sharira is one body with one jiva. A sadharana sharira or ananta-kaya is one body inhabited by infinite organisms. Nigoda are microscopic one-sensed souls, held to be especially concentrated in soil and root systems. R. Williams notes that the plants classed as anantakaya seem to be chosen for morphological peculiarities — bulbs, rhizomes, the habit of periodically shedding leaves — and that they are characterised by possibilities of vegetative reproduction. They are forbidden as food or as medicine.

Three reasons are given: that there are many souls in one body rather than one; that harvesting uproots and kills the entire plant rather than taking a fruit from it; and that there is collateral harm to earth-bodied beings and to soil organisms with two or more senses.

The part that is usually left out

This is the part that is usually left out, and it is well sourced. The root-vegetable prohibition is binding on monks and nuns; the lay anuvrata is focused on organisms with two or more senses. The ascetic diet remains the ideal and many lay Jains follow it — but the standard community list itself says plainly that most lay Jains do not avoid all of the above. Observance is commonly tightened during Paryushan. If you are reading this to understand what someone in your family does, that sentence is probably the most useful one on the page.

The list of thirty-two anantkay

1. Bhumikand (tubers)
2. Green haldar
3. Green ginger
4. Suran yam
5. Vajra yam
6. Green kachuro
7. Shatavari creepers
8. Virali creepers
9. Kunver pathu (aloe)
10. Cactus
11. Galo
12. Garlic
13. Bamboo shoot
14. Carrot
15. Lini (bhaji)
16. Lodhak
17. Garmar
18. Kisalaya (sprouts)
19. Khirsua
20. Theg
21. Green moth
22. Bark of the Lun tree
23. Kholida
24. Amrit creeper
25. Five parts of the radish
26. Fungi, including yeast
27. Vatthula bhaji
28. Sprouted pulses
29. Palak bhaji
30. Suar amali
31. Unripe amali
32. Potato, ratalu, pindalu

The list of thirty-two is the one in common circulation. Two cautions. The page it comes from runs on past thirty-two and then re-lists "ananta-kaya" as an item, conflating anantkay with the wider abhakshya list; the thirty-two boundary is what a scholarly reading corroborates. And item twenty-nine, pallanka, is identified in scholarship as beetroot while Gujarati lists render it palak, spinach — that is a botanical divergence, not a doctrinal one.

Green vegetables on parva tithis

Two reckonings are in use for the days on which green vegetables are set aside, and both are real. The first is five parva tithis — Sud Pancham; Sud Aatham and Vad Aatham; Sud Chaudas and Vad Chaudas — kept in the Shwetambar Murtipujak Tapa-gachchha, and also throughout Paryushan and Ayambil Oli. On these days the renunciation of green vegetables is added to the daily renunciation of abhakshya, stale food and ratri-bhojan. The second is six per fortnight — Panchami, Ashtami, the eleventh, the fourteenth, Amavasya and Purnima, in both pakshas. For Digambars, fasting on ashtami and chaturdashi is attested and sacitta-tyaga is common to both traditions, but green-vegetable avoidance on parva tithis specifically is not something we could establish either way, so we say neither. For Sthanakavasi and Terapanth we found nothing. "Panch tithi" is verified; "bar tithi", twelve tithis, is not, and we do not print it. Doctrinally the honest framing is that parva-tithi practice is a periodic, partial anticipation of the fifth pratima, Sacitta Tyaga, which is the permanent form.

What we could not verify

Listed rather than left out. On a page about religious practice, a confident sentence we cannot support does more harm than a stated gap.

That ratri-bhojana is one of the ashta-mulaguna: Widely written, and not supportable: the mulaguna lists are not unanimous. Somadeva, Devasena and Padmanandi give five udumbara plus meat, wine and honey; Samantabhadra gives five anuvratas plus three makaras; Jinasena substitutes dyuta for madhu; Amitagati adds a ninth, aratri-bhojana; Ashadhara has three variants. We also do not cite the Mulachara for the ratri-bhojana rule, which is a common attribution we could not verify.
That the list of 32 anantkay comes from the Jiva Vichara: A common attribution to Shantisuri’s Jiva Vichara which we could not verify, so we do not print it. What is verified: anantakaya is classed abhakshya in both Nemichandra’s Pravachana-saroddhara and Hemachandra’s Yogashastra, with the per-plant list at Yogashastra 3.44–46.
A standalone "Pratyakhyana Niryukti": It is the pratyakhyana section of Bhadrabahu’s Avashyaka Niryukti, not a separate work. Verified separately: Atura-pratyakhyana and Mahapratyakhyana among the Prakirnakas, and Pratyakhyana-purva as the ninth of the fourteen Purvas.

Tell us if this is wrong

We have shown our sources and said where they disagree. If you know this to be wrong, or you have a printed vidhi or a panchang that settles it, please tell us — we will correct it and credit you.

Sources

Where this came from

Graded, so you can weigh a claim rather than take it on trust.

JAINpedia — Jain vowsInstitutional or scholarly
JAINpedia — SiddhachakraInstitutional or scholarly
wisdomlib — pratyakhyana (Williams 1959, Balbir 1986)Institutional or scholarly
wisdomlib — acamlaInstitutional or scholarly
wisdomlib — ratribhojana (R. Williams, Jaina Yoga)Institutional or scholarly
wisdomlib — anantakaya (R. Williams)Institutional or scholarly
wisdomlib — abhakshyaInstitutional or scholarly
jainkosh — Mulachara 637–638 (the ten pratyakhyanas, Digambar)Institutional or scholarly
herenow4u — the six avashyakasCommunity source
Jain Treasures UK — paccakkhana and ayambil pachkhanCommunity source
Oshwal Association of the UK — What is AyambilCommunity source
Arihanta Institute — why Jains don’t eat root vegetablesInstitutional or scholarly
Wikipedia — Jain vegetarianism; Fasting in Jainism; PratimaInstitutional or scholarly
jainonline — knowledge of parva tithiCommunity source

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