जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
Concept · names that outlast a caubīsī

The four eternal names

शाश्वत जिन

Every eternal image bears one of four names: Ṛṣabha, Vardhamāna, Candrānana, Vāriṣeṇa.

Two of the four are Tīrthaṅkaras of our own half-cycle - Ṛṣabha the first and Vardhamāna the last. The other two are not, and belong to no list a reader of this atlas has met.

That is the point of them. The images are eternal and the caubīsīs are not: twenty-four teachers arise, teach and end, and another twenty-four follow, and the names on the eternal images go on being the same four through all of it. What the shrines record is not a particular set of twenty-four but the fact that there is always a Jina somewhere.

The same four names are on all 5,616 images on Nandīśvara, and on the eternal images everywhere else in the universe.

The three mountainstrue relative height · yojanaAñjana84,000a cone4 of the 52Dadhimukha64,000a cylinder16 of the 52Ratikara1,000a flat disc32 of the 52the Añjana is a small Meru in another colour - same height, same base, same summitThe eternal templeall 52 are identical · this one on an Añjanain plan · 100 × 50 yojana · four doors, one to a side · 70 highThe hundred and eightṚṣabha · Vardhamāna · Candrānana · Vāriṣeṇa108 × 52 = 5,616 images on the island
The three mountains, and what stands on each - The four eternal names highlighted

Measurements and counts

Names4
Of our caubīsīṚṣabha, Vardhamāna
Not of our caubīsīCandrānana, Vāriṣeṇa
Images per shrine108

Connected

Open in the interactive atlas →

समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10