Anantanatha is the fourteenth Tirthankara of the present age, his name evoking the infinite (ananta). His emblem is the falcon in the Digambara tradition, while Svetambara sources commonly give him the porcupine, one of the emblem variations between the two branches. Jains venerate him as a liberated soul and omniscient teacher among the twenty-four ford-makers of the current cosmic age.
The tradition assigns him a place in the sacred antiquity of the avasarpini, before documented history, and holds that he attained final liberation at Sammeta Shikhar (Shikharji). The sources preserve little individuating narrative for him beyond his emblem, his name, and the shared traditional life-events.
The falcon and porcupine emblems recorded for Anantanatha in the Digambara and Svetambara traditions respectively belong to a wider pattern in which the two branches, while sharing the same list of twenty-four names, order and kalyanaka structure, differ on a number of specific emblem assignments; Aranatha and Shitalanatha elsewhere in this same set show comparable divergences. Such differences are treated within the tradition as an accepted feature of two parallel lines of transmission rather than as a discrepancy either branch has sought to resolve or to explain away.