The 24 Jain Lanchhanas | Nidarshana Vedh

A lanchhana is the small emblem cut into the pedestal beneath a Jina image. It exists because Jain images of the twenty-four Tirthankaras are made deliberately alike, so the emblem underfoot is very often the only thing in the sculpture that tells you which one you are looking at. This page draws all twenty-four, links each to the life it belongs to, and marks the places where the two great traditions do not agree.

Stand in front of a temple hall of identical seated figures and the question arrives immediately: which one is which. The answer is at floor level. Learn twenty-four small shapes and a Jain temple becomes readable, in India or anywhere else, without a label and without a guide.

Why the images are alike on purpose

This is not a failure of imagination or a shortage of sculptors. It is doctrine, expressed in stone.

A Tirthankara is vitaraga, free of attachment and aversion. Omniscience in Jain terms includes the destruction of the karma that produces preference, which means there is nothing left that is personal in the ordinary sense. An image that gave each Jina a distinct face, a distinct expression or a distinct mood would be asserting exactly the individuality the tradition says has been extinguished. So the images are the same on purpose: same posture, same closed calm, same absence of anything to react to.

Which leaves the practical problem of identification, and the tradition solved it in the least distracting way available. It put the difference on the floor.

Where the mark comes from

In the traditional accounts the lanchhana is not assigned by a sculptor. It is on the body at birth.

Hemachandra’s Trishashti-Shalaka-Purusha-Charitra records it directly for several of the twenty-four. Suparshvanatha is born “marked with a svastika.” Rishabhanatha carries the mark of a bull, and the tradition connects it both to that mark and to the white bull his mother saw first among the great dreams, which is the one case where a dream sequence is itself irregular. Shitalanatha is “marked with a shrivatsa.”

That is the tradition’s own account of the origin. The art-historical account runs differently, and both belong on the page.

As scholarship rather than tradition: the systematic set of twenty-four emblems is not present on the earliest Jina images. The Kushana-period sculptures from Mathura, among the oldest Jina images that survive, generally carry no pedestal cognizance at all, and the emblems become a regular feature of Jina sculpture later. This is a standard observation in the art-historical literature, and it is not a claim about when the Tirthankaras lived. It is a claim about when sculptors began using a fixed identification system, which is a different question. Our method page sets out why we label these two kinds of statement separately rather than blending them.

The twenty-four

Each emblem below links to that Tirthankara’s page. The order is the standard sequence of this avasarpini, the descending half-cycle of time in which Jain cosmology places us.

Line drawings made for this site, following Shvetambara identifications as they stand on our own twenty-four Tirthankara pages. Quadrupeds face left, which is how the emblem is usually cut into a throne base. Four of the set are non-figurative and are drawn to geometry: the swastika, the nandavarta, the vajra and the shrivatsa.

The two lotuses, which are not the same lotus

Padmaprabha the sixth and Naminatha the twenty-first both carry a lotus, and they are the one near-repetition in the set. They are distinguished in the literature and they are drawn differently above on purpose.

Padmaprabha’s is the padma, the open bloom on its receptacle, and Johnson’s footnote on Hemachandra takes it as the red lotus. Naminatha’s is the utpala, the blue lotus, conventionally the half-open bud on a stalk. In practice a worn pedestal will not always let you tell them apart, and when it does not, the yaksha and yakshi flanking the base are the next test.

Where the two traditions disagree

Generic lists of the twenty-four lanchhanas circulate everywhere and they are usually flattened: one emblem per Tirthankara, no variants, no sects. The record is not that tidy. Four of the entries above disagree with what most online tables print, and in every case the disagreement is argued out with sources on the individual page.

#	Tirthankara	On this site	What generic lists print	What is actually going on
5	Sumatinatha	Krauncha bird	Curlew	A translation problem, not a sectarian one. Krauncha is glossed as heron, demoiselle crane and curlew, and Digambara sources give crane or koka-bird
10	Shitalanatha	Shrivatsa	Kalpavriksha	A genuine split. Hemachandra fixes the shrivatsa at the birth; Digambara lists commonly give the wishing tree, and some a svastika or the ashvattha
14	Anantanatha	Falcon	Porcupine, or hawk	A genuine split. Shyena, falcon, is the Shvetambara reading; Digambara sources give a porcupine or a bear
18	Aranatha	Nandavarta	Fish	A genuine split, twice over. Digambara lists give a fish for Aranatha, and reassign the nandavarta itself to Suparshvanatha, the seventh

We show both readings and crown neither. That is a standing rule here, not a case-by-case judgement, and it is why this site’s table will contradict the listicles. Where a living tradition holds a reading, it is not a data error waiting to be cleaned.

The seventh entry deserves one more line, because it produces a genuine ambiguity in front of a real image. A svastika beneath a Jina is Suparshvanatha in Shvetambara reckoning. A nandavarta beneath a Jina is Aranatha in Shvetambara reckoning, Suparshvanatha in Digambara reckoning, or not an identification at all, since the nandavarta is also one of the ashtamangala and gets drawn for reasons that have nothing to do with the eighteenth Tirthankara.

When the pedestal is missing

Sculptures break, and the base is the first part to go. Four other tests carry weight, and iconographers use them constantly.

The serpent canopy. A hood over the head narrows it to exactly two Tirthankaras, and the tests that separate them are set out in full on the Suparshvanatha page. The short version: Suparshvanatha carries one, five or nine hoods and no body coils; Parshvanatha carries seven or more, with the snake’s coils shown behind and beneath. The coils are the more reliable test, because a damaged canopy loses heads while the body survives.

Hair on the shoulders. Rishabhanatha is conventionally shown with locks of hair falling to his shoulders, which no other Jina has. It is the single most useful test in the whole repertoire, because it survives on figures whose pedestals are long gone.

Sex. In the Shvetambara tradition Mallinatha, the nineteenth, is a woman, and Shvetambara images may show her as one. The Digambara tradition holds that all twenty-four Tirthankaras were male. This is one of the sharpest doctrinal divergences between the traditions and an image can therefore tell you which tradition made it.

The yaksha and yakshi. Each Tirthankara has an attendant pair, usually placed at the two ends of the base, and each pair has its own attributes, mounts and number of arms. Where the emblem has worn away, the attendants often have not. Both traditions assign the pairs, and the assignments diverge for several of the twenty-four, which is itself information about who made the image.

Colour, where any survives on a painted or coloured image, is a fifth signal. Most of the twenty-four are traditionally golden, but a few are not: Chandraprabha and Suvidhinatha white, Padmaprabha and Vasupujya red, Munisuvrata and Neminatha dark, and Parshvanatha green. The values on this site are those given on our own twenty-four Tirthankara pages, and published schemes do differ from one another on one or two entries.

A note on what the emblem is not

The lanchhana is an identifier. It is not a badge of power, not an attribute the Tirthankara wields, and not a symbol that acts on the person who wears or displays it.

This is worth saying because emblem sets in other traditions often do work that way, and the borrowed assumption travels. In Jain terms it cannot. A Tirthankara who has attained omniscience has destroyed the karma that produces preference and does not favour, intervene or protect. The emblem beneath the feet is a piece of the identification system for a hall of deliberately identical images, given a devotional origin story by the tradition that uses it. Wearing a lion or a serpent obtains nothing from anybody. The argument is set out at greater length on the Navkar Mantra page, and it applies here without modification.

Frequently asked questions

↳ What is a lanchhana?

The small emblem cut into the pedestal beneath a Jina image, also called a cognizance or chihna, and the main way one Tirthankara is told from another. It exists because Jain images of the twenty-four are made deliberately alike: a Tirthankara is vitaraga, free of attachment and aversion, so giving each one a distinct face would assert exactly the individuality the tradition says has been extinguished. The difference goes on the floor instead.

↳ What is Mahavira's lanchhana?

A lion. It is the last of the twenty-four in the sequence of this avasarpini, and one of the most frequently reproduced Jain emblems anywhere. Parshvanatha, the twenty-third, carries a serpent, from the episode of the snake in the burning log. Rishabhanatha, the first, carries a bull, and his name literally means bull.

↳ Where does the lanchhana come from?

Two answers, and this site labels which is which. The tradition holds that the mark is on the body at birth: Hemachandra records Suparshvanatha as born marked with a svastika and Shitalanatha marked with a shrivatsa. Art history observes something different, that the systematic set of twenty-four is not present on the earliest Jina images, since the Kushana-period sculptures from Mathura generally carry no pedestal cognizance at all and the emblems become regular later. That is a claim about when sculptors adopted a fixed identification system, not a claim about when the Tirthankaras lived.

↳ Why do lanchhana lists on different websites disagree?

Because four of the twenty-four are genuinely disputed and most lists flatten the dispute. Shitalanatha is a shrivatsa in Shvetambara reckoning and commonly a kalpavriksha in Digambara lists. Anantanatha is a falcon in Shvetambara reckoning and a porcupine or bear in Digambara ones. Aranatha is a nandavarta in Shvetambara reckoning and a fish in Digambara lists, which also reassign the nandavarta to Suparshvanatha. Sumatinatha's krauncha is a translation problem rather than a sectarian one, since the word is glossed as heron, demoiselle crane and curlew. This site shows both readings and crowns neither.

↳ How do I identify a Jina image if the pedestal is broken?

Four other tests. A serpent canopy narrows it to two: Suparshvanatha with one, five or nine hoods and no body coils, or Parshvanatha with seven or more and the snake's coils shown behind and beneath. Locks of hair falling to the shoulders mean Rishabhanatha and nobody else. A female figure means Mallinatha in a Shvetambara setting, since the Digambara tradition holds that all twenty-four were male. And the yaksha and yakshi at the ends of the base have their own attributes and mounts, and often survive when the emblem has worn away.

↳ Do the lanchhanas have powers or protective meanings?

No. The lanchhana is an identification mark for a hall of deliberately identical images, given a devotional origin story by the tradition that uses it. It is not an attribute the Tirthankara wields and not a symbol that acts on whoever wears or displays it. A Tirthankara who has attained omniscience has destroyed the karma that produces preference, and does not favour, intervene or protect. Emblem sets in other traditions sometimes work that way; in Jain terms this one cannot.

Sources. The emblem assigned to each of the twenty-four is taken from this site's own twenty-four Tirthankara pages, each of which sets out its own sourcing, rather than from any general web list of the lanchhanas; it deliberately disagrees with those lists in four places, and the table above says where and why. Suparshvanatha born "marked with a svastika" and Shitalanatha "marked with a shrivatsa" are from Hemachandra's Trishashti-Shalaka-Purusha-Charitra, Johnson's translation, as is the reading of Padmaprabha's lotus as the red one. The observation that the Kushana-period Jina images from Mathura generally lack a pedestal cognizance, and that the systematic set of twenty-four emerges later, is art-historical scholarship and is labelled as such; it is offered as a statement about sculptural convention, not about chronology. The iconographic tests for a serpent canopy follow our Suparshvanatha page and the published museum catalogue descriptions cited there. That Mallinatha is a woman in the Shvetambara tradition and male in the Digambara one is a well-known doctrinal divergence and is presented as one. Complexion values are those on our own Tirthankara pages, and published schemes differ from one another on one or two entries. The line drawings are original work made for this site; their conventions are documented in the repository alongside the files. Corrections are seva: tell us.

The 24 Lanchhanas: How to Tell One Tirthankara From Another