on his shoulders. Sometimes Suparshvanath is shown with a small snake-hood. The symbols are marked in the centre or in the corner of the pedestal of the statue. The sects of Jainism Digambara and Svetambara have different depictions of idols. Digambara images are naked without any ornamentation, whereas Svetambara ones are clothed and decorated with temporary ornaments. The images are often marked with Srivatsa on the chest and Tilaka on the forehead. Srivatsa is one of the ashtamangala (auspicious symbols), which sometimes resembles fleur-de-lis, an endless knot, a flower or diamond-shaped symbol. The bodies of tirthankara statues are exceptionally consistent throughout the over 2,000 years of the historical record. The bodies are rather slight, with very wide shoulders and a narrow waist. Even more than is usual in Indian sculpture, the depiction takes relatively little interest in the accurate depiction of the underlying musculature and bones, but is interested in the modelling of the outer surfaces as broad swelling forms. The ears are extremely elongated, alluding to the heavy earrings the figures wore in their early lives before they took the path to enlightenment, when most were wealthy, if not royal. Sculptures with four tirthanakars, or their heads, facing in four directions, are not uncommon in early sculpture, but unlike the comparable Hindu images, these represent four different tirthanakars, not four aspects of the same deity. Multiple extra arms are avoided in tirthanakar images, though their attendants or guardians may have them. In other religions The first Tirthankara, Rishabhanatha is mentioned in Hindu texts like the Rigveda, Vishnupurana and Bhagwata Purana. The Yajurveda mentions the name of three Tīrthaṅkaras – Ṛiṣhabha, Ajitnātha and Ariṣṭanemi. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa includes legends about the Tirthankaras of Jainism particularly Rishabha. Yoga Vasishta, Chapter 15 of Vairagya Khanda, Sloka 8 gives the saying of Rama: Champat Rai Jain, a 20th-century Jain writer, claimed that the "Four and Twenty Elders" mentioned in the Book of Revelation (the final book of the Christian Bible) are "Twenty-four Tirthankaras". See also God in Jainism Kundakunda List of Tirthankaras Tattva (Jainism) References Citations Sources God in Jainism Jainism