Rishabhanatha

The traditional account

Jain tradition places Rishabhanatha at the transition between two ages, when the wish-fulfilling trees that had sustained humanity ceased to provide and people had to learn to support themselves. He is described as the first king, the first to teach the seventy-two arts, and the first to renounce; his son Bharata is held in some accounts to have given India the name Bharatavarsha, and another son, Bahubali, is the subject of one of the tradition's best-known narratives.

He is given a lifespan and stature on a scale outside historical reckoning, as the earliest figures of the series consistently are. He is said to have attained liberation on Mount Kailasa, or Ashtapada. No historical claim attaches to any of this; the entry describes what the tradition holds.

Significance

Rishabhanatha functions in Jain thought as a culture-hero rather than merely a predecessor. The account makes the tradition older than civilisation itself and positions Jain teaching as coeval with human society, which matters to a tradition that denies it was ever founded.

He appears outside Jain literature as well. A figure named Rishabha occurs in the Bhagavata Purana as an avatar of Vishnu who follows an ascetic path, and the relation between the two has been argued over — whether the Puranic figure absorbs the Jain one, or both draw on a shared older stratum. Neither reading is settled.

In image

Rishabhanatha is identified by the bull that serves as his emblem, and often by hair falling to his shoulders, a feature rarely given to other tirthankaras. Images of him are among the most numerous in Jain art, and the great standing figures at Gwalior and the temple images at Palitana and Ranakpur are principally his.