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CHAPTER THREE
impression of new suns reflected in water. As they moved, their waving top-knots looked like newly grown tails of young peacocks. They were passed from lap to lap by kings from curiosity, like rājahansas from lotus to lotus by large waves. The King set them on his lap, breast arms, shoulder, and head, like jeweled ornaments. Smelling their heads again and again, like a bee smelling a lotus, with spontaneous delight, the King was not satisfied. Walking at both sides of the King, clinging to his fingers, they looked like the two suns of Meru. The King meditated on them constantly with supreme joy and agreeably, like a yogi on the supreme soul and the soul. The King often looked at them, as if they were wishing-trees that had grown up in the house, and often spoke to them, as if they were parrots. With joy on the part of the King and glory to the Ikşvāku-family, they both gradually became more and more mature.
Youth of Ajita and Sagara (22-56) Ajita Svāmin himself knew all the arts, law, and other things, such as grammar, etc. For the Jinas possess three kinds of knowledge naturally. On the other hand, at the King's command Sagara began to go to a teacher on an auspicious day, which was celebrated by a festival. In a few days Sagara absorbed the sciences, grammar, etc., like the ocean the waters of rivers. Without effort Saumitri (Sagara) took the wealth of rhetoric from the teacher, like a torch taking light from another torch. He made his own speech accomplish its purpose by poems, praises of passionless saints, flowers on the creepers of rhetoric, elixir for the ear. An ocean of learning and intelligence, he grasped unhesitatingly all the works of sacred authority, like deposits made by himself.
Sagara defeated his opponents by unerring quotations from the doctrine of Syādvāda, 114 like Jitaśatru his enemies by arrows. He plunged into the unfathomable
114 28. See I, n. 4.
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