विमलनाथ
Vimalanatha
The thirteenth Tirthankara.
The thirteenth Tirthankara, born at Kampilya on the Ganges plain, a city that appears in the Mahabharata as a Panchala capital and in Jain sources as a Tirthankara birthplace.
The name means the stainless one. Tradition gives the usual account — that the household’s troubles cleared during the pregnancy — and beyond it the record holds the emblem, the sequence and the places.
The boar is his emblem. He attained nirvana at Shikharji.
Tradition preserves the name, the emblem, the places and the position in the sequence for every Tirthankara, but distinctive narrative for only a handful. For this figure there is little beyond what is above — and saying so is more useful than three invented paragraphs. Where a well-sourced account exists that we have missed, we would like to hear about it.
This figure is known from tradition; there is no independent historical evidence. That is a statement about the record, not about the tradition.
Written for Jain Times. Corrections are welcome — see sources and licences.