tirthankaras/tk-18-aranatha.jpg · 1200×1600The seventh universal emperor. Ara is the spoke of a wheel: his mother dreamt of a jewelled spoke — fitting for a chakravartin, whose defining possession is the chakra, and fitting again in a cosmology whose ages are themselves called the spokes of the turning wheel of time.
He completes a remarkable run: the 16th, 17th and 18th Tirthankaras were all born in Hastinapur, and all three were universal emperors. Hastinapur is also where Rishabhanatha broke his year-long fast with Shreyansa's sugarcane juice. Four of the twenty-four meet in one town in the upper Ganga–Yamuna doab — the same Hastinapur that is the Kaurava capital of the Mahabharata.
