Buddha vs Mahavira: Were they contemporaries? Who came earlier?

Philosophical and religious arguments about the nature and origin of reality are as old as human history. In India, sages and philosophers held many metaphysical views and were in constant dialogue and argument with one another. The Jains were active participants in the debates, and among their central tenets was the position referred to as Anekantavada. Translated literally, it means “no-one-perspective-ism,” in other words, the multiplicity and relativity of views. By this, Jains meant that in many cases the arguments espoused by the various participants in a debate all held some validity. Because the Jain position was able to overcome the apparent inconsistencies between the other views, however, it came closer to fully grasping the one underlying truth, satya.

Jains thus regarded both Buddhist “nihilism” and Hindu “eternalism” as correct and yet incomplete. Instead, they advocated holding simultaneously to the eternal, innate purity of the soul and to the reality of the soul’s connection to karma and, hence, suffering. Likewise, contemporary Jains reject the absolutist “either/or” that characterizes much of traditional Western logic, taking instead the relativist stance that for every question there are many “right” answers that reflect from different angles and in varying degrees the one truth, satya. (Source: Pluralism.org)