Neminatha

The narrative

Neminatha is presented as a prince of the Yadava line and a cousin of Krishna. The story for which he is known concerns his marriage: riding to the ceremony, he heard the cries of animals penned for the wedding feast, understood that they were to be killed on his account, released them, and renounced the world without completing the marriage. His betrothed, Rajimati, is said to have renounced in turn and become a nun.

The episode is among the most frequently depicted in Jain art and the most cited in Jain teaching on non-violence, since it turns on the refusal of harm incidental to an ordinary social obligation rather than on an act of violence directly committed.

Krishna in Jain tradition

The connection to Krishna is not incidental. Jain universal history includes a series of figures corresponding to the epic material — Krishna appears as a Vasudeva, one of a recurring class of heroes — and Neminatha's kinship places the Jain series within the same narrative world as the Mahabharata without accepting its theology. Jain versions of the Krishna story, and Jain retellings of the Ramayana such as Vimalasuri's Paumacariya, work by this method: the familiar cast, reordered around Jain assumptions.

Site and image

Mount Girnar in Gujarat is held to be where Neminatha attained liberation, and is one of the principal Jain pilgrimage sites. He is identified in image by the conch that serves as his emblem, and is often shown dark in complexion, a feature shared with the Krishna material.