Aranatha Ji

Aranatha is the eighteenth tirthankara of the present age. His emblem is the fish. He is the third of the three tirthankaras who were also Chakravartins, universal monarchs, and Kamadevas, with Shantinatha and Kunthunatha. Like both of them he was born at Hastinapur.

Aranath. One source gives his emblem as the Nandyavarta rather than the fish, and that variance is recorded.

Lanchana, the emblem: the fish, with one source giving Nandyavarta or fish. Body colour: golden, in meditative posture, free of ornament, clothing and weapons per the classical convention. Yaksha and yakshi: the sources conflict sharply. One list gives Yaksheta and Dhana, another Kendra and Ajita, and a third Mahendra and Vijaya. This is probably genuine Digambara and Shvetambara variation, but no source consulted labelled which set belongs to which tradition, so none is presented here as definitive.

He is said to have attained omniscience after sixteen years of meditation, traditionally beneath a mango tree, and nirvana at Shikharji. His Chakravartin reign follows the same pattern as those of Shantinatha and Kunthunatha before him: universal sovereignty, and then its renunciation.

Father: King Sudarshana, of the Kuru lineage. Birthplace: Hastinapur, also given as Gajapura. His mother's name is unresolved. Sources give Devi, Mitradevi and Mitrasena, and the discrepancy is recorded rather than settled.

Principal places on this platform: Hastinapur, his birthplace, where he flanks Shantinatha in the Digambara Bada Mandir; a charan shrine at Shikharji marking his nirvana; and the four-faced Chaturmukha Basadi at Karkala, completed in 1586, which enshrines him among others.

No sectarian difference could be established beyond the conflicting attendant names described above, which the sources do not attribute by tradition. As with Shantinatha and Kunthunatha, the real confusion risk is internal: the three are consecutive, share a birthplace, a lineage, a body colour and the same double status, and their biographies run closely parallel.