Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 5

SR No.: 001005
Original Sutra Author: Hemchandracharya
Author: Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra
Publication Year: 1962
Total Pages: 507
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Mythology, & Story
File Size: 11 MB

Page 92

MARRIAGES OF VASUDEVĂ WITH MAIDENS 61
Story of Sodāsa (353–365) Asleep in a temple there, Vasudeva was aroused by a Rākşasa, who had come quickly, and was beaten severely by his fists. After fighting the Rākşasa hand-to-hand for a long time, Sauri tied him with a cloth like a goat that had been bought. Beating him on the ground, like a washerman clothes on a stone, he killed the Rākşasa.
At daybreak the people saw him. Delighted, the people put Sauri in a chariot and conducted him inside a home with a drum being played, as if he were an eminent bridegroom. Promptly the people offered him five hundred maidens. Preventing that, Sauri said, “Who is this Rākşasa?” One of them explained:
“In the city Sri Kāñcanapura in the Kalingas, there was a powerful king, Jitaśatru. This was his son, Sodāsa, greedy for flesh by nature,65 but the king had given freedom from fear to living creatures in his country. But the king, asked by his son for the meat of one peacock every day, agreed, though against his wishes. Daily the cooks brought a peacock from Mt. Vanía. One day when it had been killed for cooking, it was stolen by a cat.
So at that time they cooked and gave him the flesh of a dead boy. After eating it, he asked them, "What is this unusually sweet meat?' They told him the truth and Sodāsa ordered: 'In future a man must be cooked in the place of the peacock every day. With these orders, he himself constantly seized boys from the people. When the king found it out, he expelled him from his country from anger. Terrified of his father, he lived here in an inaccessible place and killed five or six men every day. The villain was killed by you. Well done! Well done! ”
When they had told him this, Sauri gladly married the maidens. He stayed for the night and went to excellent
65 359. Cf. IV, pp. 187 ff., for a slightly different version of a cannibal Sodāsa.