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110
Kummāputtachariam
Thought (of the purest kind) is the boat to cross the sea of worldly life; thought is the road to the cities of Heaven and Liberation; thought is the Chintāmaņi (desire-yielding) gem, yielding things, contemplated in their minds by the faithful, however difficult to obtain they may be. (6)
It was by reason of pure thought that Kummāputta who conceived the Truth, obtained Perfect Knowledge although he had not taken to the actual life of monks and was staying in his house.
(7)
At that time there lived the seniormost pupil of the Lord Mahāvīra, named Indrabhūti, a houseless monk, known as Gautama by his family name, *[seven hands tall], of a stature measuring equal in the four distances, possessed of a bodily frame with bones held up by broad bone-pieces fastened by hard, naillike bones, fair in complexion like a lotus or like the line on the touch-stone of a piece of gold, of fierce, resplendent and great penance, * [noble, terrible, of terrific qualities] of terrific austerities, living a life of very hard celibacy, regardless of body, holding contracted (i.e. in full control) the vast mass of the flash (of his penance) possessed of the knowledge of the fourteen Purva books, endowed with the four knowledges, (holding sway over all the letters of the alphabet), surrounded by five hundred houseless monks, elevating his soul by frequent observances of Shashtha fasts [and trying to realize by intuition the soul by self
* The rectangular brackets contain the meanings of important readings noticed in the manuscripts.
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