The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2504 page)

 
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(Skt., ‘builders of the ford’). In Jainism, the title given to the twenty-four omniscient spiritual teachers who have displayed the way of salvation across the ocean of suffering and existence, thus a synonym for
jina
. With the exception of
abha
(first),
P
r
va
(twenty-third), and
Mah
v
ra
(twenty-fourth), the Jain canon gives a highly stereotyped description of their lives. Jain temples today house identical images of all twenty-four t
rtha
karas, which are distinctively identifiable only from the totem which is commonly associated with each:

(1) 
abha (bull),
(2) Ajita (elephant),
(3) Sambhava (horse),
(4) Abhinandana (ape),
(5) Sumati (heron),
(6) Padmaprabha,
(7) Sup
r
va,
(8) Candraprabha,
(9) Suvidhi (crocodile),
(10) 
tala (wishing tree),
(11) 
reyamsa (rhinoceros),
(12) Vasupujya (male buffalo),
(13) Vimala (boar),
(14) Ananta (hawk/bear),
(15) Dharma (thunderbolt),
(16) 
nti (deer),
(17) Kunthu (goat),
(18) Ara (diagram),
(19) Malli (water jar),
(20) Manisuvrata (tortoise),
(21) Nami (blue lotus),
(22) Nemi (conch shell),
(23) P
r
va (snake),
(24) Mah
v
ra (lion).