Mallinatha: The 19th Tirthankara

The Five Kalyanakas

Months are given in the purnimanta convention, the one Hemachandra uses. For a Krishna-paksha date the Gujarati amanta name is one month earlier; Shukla dates are the same in both.

Note the pattern: her first four kalyanakas all fall in Ashwini, and only the nirvana shifts, to Bharani. This holds across the tradition, and we map it in full on the kalyanaka calendar.

A Woman Tirthankara, and the Debate That Follows

In the Shvetambara tradition, the nineteenth Tirthankara was a woman: Malli, daughter of King Kumbha of Mithila. The tradition counts her among the accheras, the wonders of this cosmic age, precisely because it was not expected.

The Digambara tradition holds that all twenty-four were male, and reads Mallinatha as a man. This is not a small disagreement about one biography; it follows directly from the deeper divergence over whether liberation is attainable from a woman’s body. The same fault line produced the two sects’ different accounts of Marudevi’s moksha.

Hemachandra gives the karmic reason for the female birth in a startling line: “Because of penance mixed with deceit, he acquired woman-inclination-karma and also the body-making-karma of a Tirthakrt because of the sthanas.” The same lifetime earned both the Tirthankara-nama-karma and, through concealment in austerity, the female birth.

And she is the only Tirthankara of the twenty-four who attained omniscience on the very day she renounced. Diksha and kevala jnana share a single tithi, Margashirsha Shukla 11. Everyone else waited months, years, or in Rishabhanatha’s case a thousand years.

The Kalpasutra, notably, gives her no kalyanaka data at all.

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Her Birth Star, and Yours

Mallinatha was born under Ashwini, in Mesha. If that is your janma nakshatra too, the tradition offers a devotional kinship: her kalyanaka days, her story, her image. Kinship, not destiny.

Our free kundali tool computes your janma nakshatra and tells you directly which Tirthankaras share it. The complete cross-verified table is at the birth stars of the 24 Tirthankaras.

Sources. Kalyanaka dates and nakshatras from Hemachandra's Trishashti-Shalaka-Purusha-Charitra (Johnson translation), read chapter by chapter, with the Kalpasutra cross-checked where it covers this Tirthankara. Biographical and iconographic details follow the standard references. Where the sects differ, both readings are shown; where a source does not state a value, we say so rather than infer it. Corrections are seva: tell us.