Every Tirthankara’s life is marked by five kalyanakas, the auspicious moments the whole tradition remembers: conception, birth, renunciation, omniscience and final liberation. Twenty-four Tirthankaras, five events each. One hundred and twenty sacred days.
The classical texts record them with real precision: month, fortnight, lunar day, and the nakshatra the moon occupied. But nobody has ever put all 120 in one place with their sources shown. So we read Hemachandra’s Trishashti-Shalaka-Purusha-Charitra chapter by chapter, cross-checked the Kalpasutra, and compiled it.
Read the calendar convention before using these dates
Months here are purnimanta, the convention Hemachandra uses. For any Krishna-paksha date, the Gujarati amanta month name is one month earlier. So Rishabhanatha's birth, given here as Chaitra Krishna 8, is the same day your Gujarati panchang calls Fagan Vad 8. Shukla dates are identical in both systems. This single rule resolves most of the apparent contradictions between Jain date sources, and almost nobody states it.
The pattern nobody has written up
Read the table below down the nakshatra column and something remarkable appears.
The first four kalyanakas — conception, birth, renunciation and omniscience — always fall in the same nakshatra. For all 24 Tirthankaras, without a single exception. A whole life held under one star.
Then, at the very end, about ten of them shift for the nirvana alone. And four of those shifts are to the immediately adjacent asterism:
| Tirthankara | First four kalyanakas | Nirvana |
|---|---|---|
| Ajitanatha | Rohini | Mrigashirsha (adjacent) |
| Abhinandananatha | Abhijit | Pushya |
| Sumatinatha | Magha | Punarvasu |
| Suparshvanatha | Vishakha | Mula |
| Chandraprabha | Anuradha | Shravana |
| Shreyansanatha | Shravana | Dhanishtha (adjacent) |
| Vasupujya | Shatabhisha | Uttara Bhadrapada |
| Vimalanatha | Uttara Bhadrapada | Revati (adjacent) |
| Mallinatha | Ashwini | Bharani (adjacent) |
| Mahavira | Uttara Phalguni | Svati |
Mahavira’s shift is the one every Jain already keeps: Kartika amavasya in Svati is Diwali, and the beginning of the Vira Nirvana Samvat era.
All 120 Kalyanakas
Loading the calendar…
What this data can and cannot tell you
It can tell you which sacred day falls on a given tithi, which Tirthankara shares your birth star, and how the tradition structured a life around a single nakshatra.
It cannot be turned into a horoscope. No Jain text records a planetary position for any Tirthankara, and no birth time survives for any of them. We looked very hard: the one Mahavira kundali circulating online turns out to be impossible.
Find your own janma nakshatra with the free kundali tool, which now tells you directly which Tirthankara shares it. The full birth-star table with sect variants is at the birth stars of the 24 Tirthankaras.
Sources. Hemachandra's Trishashti-Shalaka-Purusha-Charitra in Helen Johnson's 1931 translation, read chapter by chapter; the Kalpasutra in Jacobi's translation for Rishabhanatha, Neminatha, Parshvanatha and Mahavira; the Digambara Tiloya Pannatti line via Jainkosh for sect comparison. Where the sects differ, both readings are noted. Where the source genuinely does not state a value (Suparshvanatha's chyavana and kevala paksha), we say so rather than inferring. Two values are flagged for further verification: Sumatinatha's nirvana nakshatra and Shitalanatha's diksha tithi. Johnson's archaic synonyms are resolved throughout (Hastottara = Uttara Phalguni, Paushna = Revati, Radha = Vishakha, Tvashtra = Chitra, Varuna = Shatabhisha, Maitreya = Anuradha). Corrections are seva: tell us.