Munisuvrata Ji

Munisuvrata is the twentieth tirthankara of the present age. His emblem is the tortoise, and he is shown with a black body colour. He is one of only two tirthankaras not of the Ikshvaku solar line, belonging instead to the Harivamsha lunar dynasty. The other is Neminatha. Four of his five kalyanakas are placed at Rajgir.

Munisuvratanatha, and Munisuvrata Swami.

Lanchana, the emblem: the tortoise, shown beneath him. Body colour: black, which distinguishes him sharply from the golden tirthankaras. A distinct image type, the Jivantasvami form, shows him crowned and ornamented while standing in kayotsarga, representing his appearance before renunciation. That is unusual: tirthankara images are normally shown stripped of royalty. Yaksha: Varuna, agreed by both traditions. Yakshi: Bahurupini in Digambara tradition, Naradatta in Shvetambara tradition.

Tradition places his era in the time of the Jain Ramayana, the Jain retelling of the Rama story, and describes him as a contemporary of Rama. That Jain telling differs substantially from the Hindu Ramayana, and the two should not be read as the same narrative. He is said to have lived as a youth for 7,500 years and ruled for 15,000 before renouncing, and to have attained omniscience after eleven months of austerity beneath a champaka tree.

Father: King Sumitra. Mother: Queen Padmavati, who is said to have seen the fourteen auspicious dreams before his birth. Birthplace: Rajgir in Bihar. Dynasty: Harivamsha, a lunar line, not Ikshvaku.

Rajgir is his principal place, and this platform carries it: conception, birth, initiation and omniscience are all placed there, with the Naulakha Mandir and its black stone image marking the birthplace. Only Vasupujya at Champapuri has a greater concentration. His liberation was at Shikharji, where a tonk marks it. He is also enshrined at the sixteenth-century Chaturmukha Basadi at Karkala, which this platform carries, and at temples across Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

The yakshi's name differs by sect; the yaksha is agreed. No difference in emblem, colour or dynasty was found. A small but real confusion risk: the name contains muni, the ordinary word for a Jain ascetic and a common honorific for any monk. Care is needed not to read a generic reference to a muni as a reference to this tirthankara.