Article: Ananta

Dates and numbers

The five auspicious events that mark a Jina’s life – kalyāṇakas – are traditionally associated with a specific date. This is given according to the system of the Indian calendar:

• month
• fortnight
• day in the fortnight.

Astrological considerations also play a role here and the texts normally mention the constellations when an auspicious event takes place.

The dates associated with these events are potential or actual dates of commemoration. These may be marked in festivals, which determine the Jain religious calendar.

There may be variations in the dates in different sources, Śvetāmbara on one side, Digambara on the other. But there are also cases of differences within the same sectarian tradition.

Monastic and lay communities

An omniscient Jina preaches
Image by British Library © CC0 1.0 (Creative Commons Public Domain)

A Jina is not an enlightened being who exists alone after reaching omniscience. After perfect knowledge comes general preaching – samavasaraṇa. This sermon, which is attended by all, is reported in the scriptures as resulting in large numbers of listeners being inspired. Many turn to religious life, becoming monks or nuns, while many others make the vows that lay people – śrāvaka and śrāvikā – can follow in their everyday lives. Further, the Jina’s teachings are preserved and passed on by his chief disciples – the gaṇadharas. This is why a Jina is also called a Tīrthaṃkara, meaning ‘ford-maker’ or ‘founder of a community’.

Each Jina establishes a ‘fourfold community‘, led by the chief disciples. Made up of monks, nuns, lay men and lay women, the fourfold community follows the principles the Jina has set out in his preaching. How members follow the religious teachings vary according to whether they remain householders or take initiation into mendicancy. Individual figures relating to each Jina are thus important.

Ananta’s fourfold community

Chief disciples	Monks	Nuns	Lay men	Lay women
50, led by Yaśas – Śvetāmbara Jaya – Digambara	66,000	62,000 or 100,800 led by Padmā – Śvetāmbara 62,000 led by Sarvaśrī – Digambara	206,000	414,000

Note that, in this case, the size of the nuns’ community in certain sources is slightly less than the monks’ community, which is unusual. No explanation is available for this.

Identification

All Jinas have individual emblems – lāñchanas – and colours that help to identify them in artwork. They also have attendant deities known as yakṣa and yakṣī, who often appear flanking them in art.

More details

Besides the basic information, the sources provide more details on various topics. These are almost infinite and vary depending on the sources. Such information differs between Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras. Here are only a few instances of extra detail.

All of the princes who become Jinas are carried on a palanquin to the park where they perform the ritual gesture of initiation into monastic life – dīkṣā. The palanquin of Anantanātha or Lord Ananta is named Sāgaradattā. On this occasion, he is accompanied by numerous kings.

He performs a two-day fast. The next day he breaks his fast at the house of Vijaya in the town of Vardhamānapura. In Digambara sources he does this at the house of a king called Viśākha.

Ananta wanders for three years as an ordinary ascetic and reaches omniscience under a tree of the aśoka variety.

Events, stories and hymns

Statue of Ananta
Image by Ramesh Kumar © Jain Sites in Tamilnadu

The life of Anantanātha or Lord Ananta is almost eventless. In the 9th-century Lives of the 54 Jain Great Men – Cauppaṇṇa-mahāpurisa-cariya – written in Prakrit by the Śvetāmbara monk Śīlānka, the chapter about the 14th Jina is hardly more than one page.

The 12th-century Sanskrit text Tri-ṣaṣṭi-śalākā-puruṣa-caritra, written by Hemacandra, has become the standard Śvetāmbara version of the Jinas’ lives. This text gives Ananta’s life more substance because the story of the triad of Suprabha, Puruṣottama and Madhu is inserted within the general frame of the story and told at length. As usual with such triads, it is a tale of war and fighting. The two main enemies are the Vāsudeva Puruṣottama and the Prati-vāsudeva Madhu, whose hatred continues from their previous births.

There are several sizeable biographies focusing on the 14th Jina. One famous example is Janna’s epic poem Ananta-purāṇa, written in 1230 in Kannara. Another is Nemicandra-sūri’s 1159 Prakrit poem, the Aṇanta-jiṇa-cariya. In 9,610 stanzas, it supplements the tale with:

• numerous descriptions
• maxims and proverbs
• stories illustrating the results of karmas and various aspects of the Jain teachings and practice, with one set of eight stories, for instance, centred on the eight kinds of worship – pūjā – to the Jinas
• accounts of the two previous births of Ananta
• an explanation in the final stanzas of how the author was inspired by the devotion of a Jain couple.

Ananta is mainly praised alongside other Jinas in hymns dedicated to the 24 Jinas. One instance is the devotional song dedicated to this Jina in the Gujarati set of hymns composed by Yaśovijaya in the 17th century. This example can be found among the manuscripts digitised on JAINpedia.

Temples and images

Anantanātha or Lord Ananta is not one of the most popular Jinas. Yet he is known through various sculptures of him alone or in a group (Shah 1987: 150), such as the figures in caves 8 and 9 at Khanda-giri in Orissa. Metal images showing Ananta alone or with other Jinas are also available in temples and museums.

An early episode in the Jain tradition is associated with an image of this Jina in Kalinga, modern-day Orissa. It is said that in 150 BCE King Kharavela fought against the Nandas, a rival dynasty, recapturing the image of Ananta they had taken from his ancestors (Shantinath Dibbad in Hegewald 2011: 64).

Temples dedicated to Ananta are found all over in India, although they are not that numerous. There is one in Ayodhyā, the place connected with this Jina (ground plan in Hegewald 2009: 368 fig. 93).

For reasons as yet unknown, this Jina is particularly popular in Karnataka. Several temples – basadis – feature his image as the main idol, such as the Anantanātha temples in:

• Laskshmeshvar, also called the Hale Basti (basic layout in Hegewald 2009: 524).

• Melage or Melige, in Shimoga district, which was built by Ddvarajannpati and his wife Kompamnianm.

Anantanātha temples continue to be built. The Varadur temple, completed in 1978 in Wayanad, Kerala, is one instance among several.