Aṣṭāpada
A crystal mountain cut into eight terraces a yojana apart, a hall of jewels on its summit with the twenty-four in their own sizes and colours, and a moat a thousand yojana deep round its foot.
Ṛṣabha, the first Tīrthaṅkara, climbed Aṣṭāpada with ten thousand monks and left the world there on the thirteenth of dark Māgha. His son Bharata burnt the bodies on three pyres, built on the summit the hall Siṃhaniṣadyā — a yojana square, three gavyūti high, four doors of crystal — and set inside it the twenty-four Tīrthaṅkaras of this age "of the respective figures, size and colour, like the Masters in person": sixteen of gold, two of lapis, two of crystal, two of cat's-eye, two of ruby, Ṛṣabha at five hundred dhanuṣ beside Mahāvīra at seven hāth. Then he cut eight terraces round the mountain, a yojana apart, so that no human could climb it; and two ages later the sixty thousand sons of Sagara dug a moat round its foot a thousand yojana deep, "terrifying as Pātāla", and Jahnu filled it from the Gaṅgā. The atlas draws every one of those figures, and its scale morph shows what they mean side by side. Follows the Śvetāmbara reckoning throughout.
All of it is also walkable as an interactive atlas of nested maps.
The hall 4
- Siṃhaniṣadyā सिंहनिषद्या
The hall on the summit - The iron guardsmen लोहयन्त्रपुरुष
Mechanical men at the doors - The ninety-nine brothers नवनवति भ्रातृ
Statues in precious stone, and Bharata listening - The twenty-four images चतुर्विंशति जिनबिम्ब
In their own sizes and colours