Page:The Heart of Jainism (IA heartofjainism00stevuoft).djvu/84

 of this saint lies in the fact that he was the first Tīrthaṅkara to become a ċakravartī, or emperor of the whole of Bhārata (i. e. India). Śāntinātha's height was forty bow-shots, and his emblem is the deer. He attained mokṣa from Mt. Pārśvanātha in Bengal in company with nine hundred Sādhus. With the exception of four, all the Tīrthaṅkara passed to nirvāṇa from this hill.

After half a palya of time the seventeenth Tīrthaṅkara was born in Gajapurī, where his parents, King Śivarāja and Queen Śrīdevī, reigned. Before his birth his mother saw a heap (kuntha) of jewels; during his life people began to show greater kindness to insects (kunthu), and the power of his father's enemies was stunted (kuntha). Kunthunātha's sign was the goat, and he was thirty-five bow-shots in height. He, like his predecessor, became an emperor, and obtained mokṣa from Pārśvanātha, but accompanied by a thousand companions.

Queen Devī, wife of King Sudarsana of Hastināpura, saw a vision of a bank of jewels before the birth of her son, the eighteenth Tīrthaṅkara, who was born a quarter palya of time after Kunthunātha. Aranātha was thirty bow-shots in height, his emblem is the third kind of svastika (the Nandāvartta), he was also an emperor, and he passed to mokṣa from Sameta Śikhara (Mt. Pārśvanātha) with a thousand monks.

The nineteenth Tīrthaṅkara is the most interesting of all, for owing to deceitfulness in a previous life this saint was born as a woman; having, however, done all the twenty things that make an ascetic a Tīrthaṅkara, nothing could prevent his becoming one, but his previous deceitfulness resulted in his becoming a female Tīrthaṅkara. She was born in Mithilā, where her parents, King Kumbera and