Rishabhanatha Ji

Rishabhanatha, also called Adinatha, is the first tirthankara of the present cosmic age in Jainism, and in the tradition's telling the figure who begins civilisation itself. His emblem is the bull. He is the father of Bharata, from whom tradition holds the land takes the name Bharata, and of Bahubali, whose colossal images stand at Shravanabelagola, Karkala, Venur and Dharmasthala.

Adinatha, the first lord, is the name used as often as Rishabhanatha itself. Also Adishvara, Yugadideva, lord of the beginning of the age, Nabheya, son of Nabhi, and Prathamarajeshwara, the first king.

Lanchana, the emblem: the bull (vrishabha), carved at the pedestal. Some early images instead show a dharmachakra, a wheel, in that position. Body colour: golden. Shown seated in padmasana or standing in kayotsarga, the posture of abandoning the body. He is distinguished from every other tirthankara by long locks of hair falling over both shoulders. Shvetambara tradition explains this precisely: at his initiation he tore out only four handfuls of hair rather than the usual five. Associated tree: the banyan. Yaksha: Gomukha, bull-faced. Yakshi: Chakreshvari, four-armed.

Tradition holds that before him, people lived from wish-fulfilling trees and needed nothing. As that age ended, he taught agriculture, writing, arithmetic, trade, defence and the crafts: traditionally seventy-two sciences to men and sixty-four crafts to women. Jainism therefore understands him not merely as a teacher of religion but as the origin of ordered human life. His renunciation came suddenly. Watching the celestial dancer Nilanjana perform, he saw her die mid-performance, understood the impermanence of everything before him, and left his kingdom. His five kalyanakas: conception and birth at Ayodhya; initiation in the Siddhartha garden there, under an ashoka tree; omniscience under a banyan at Purimatala, identified with present-day Prayagraj; and liberation on Mount Ashtapada.

Father: Nabhi, the last of the fourteen Kulakaras, the patriarchs who guided humanity before the tirthankaras, and king of Ayodhya. Mother: Marudevi. Birthplace: Ayodhya, also called Vinita, capital of the Ikshvaku dynasty. His sons Bharata and Bahubali matter enormously in the tradition. Bahubali is revered in his own right and is the subject of the great monoliths of Karnataka, though he is not himself a tirthankara.

He is the beginning of the present cycle, and the tirthankara most widely enshrined across India after Parshvanatha and Mahavira. Principal places on this platform: Palitana, the temple city on Shatrunjaya; Ranakpur, where his four-faced image looks in all directions; Dilwara at Mount Abu; Kesariyaji at Rishabhdeo; the Adinatha temple in the Jain group at Khajuraho; Kundalpur in Damoh, where his image is venerated as Bade Baba; Bawangaja, where he is carved eighty-four feet into the hillside; Kulpakji; Kambadahalli; and Mangi-Tungi, site of the modern 108-foot Statue of Ahimsa.

Shvetambara images typically show the shoulder locks described above. The two traditions also place Bahubali's kingdom differently: Podanapur in Digambara accounts, Taxila or Gandhara in Shvetambara ones. Not to be confused with Rishabha, a sage described in the Hindu Bhagavata Purana as an avatar of Vishnu. Jain tradition treats the two as unrelated: Rishabhanatha is understood as a human being who attained omniscience, not as a divine incarnation.