Kunthunatha is the seventeenth Tirthankara of the present age, venerated as a liberated soul and omniscient teacher. His emblem is the goat. Like Shantinatha before him and Aranatha after, he is counted in Jain tradition as both a Tirthankara and a chakravartin, a universal emperor who abandoned earthly dominion for the path of liberation, so that three ford-makers in unbroken sequence are remembered as having renounced world-sovereignty.
Tradition places him in the sacred antiquity of the avasarpini, before documented history, and holds that he attained final liberation at Sammeta Shikhar (Shikharji). Beyond his emblem, his dual status as ford-maker and emperor, and the traditional life-events, the sources preserve little narrative particular to him.
A chakravartin, in Jain cosmology, is a universal monarch said to rule all six continents of the traditional world-system by virtue of possessing fourteen precious jewels and nine treasures, a station of maximal worldly power that the tradition sets up specifically in order to be renounced. That Kunthunatha, Shantinatha and Aranatha occupy this station in unbroken sequence before turning to asceticism is presented in Jain texts as making their eventual renunciation a more pointed demonstration of dharma's claim over even the highest worldly achievement available.