Treasury of Jain Tales

SR No.: 006762
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: V M Kulkarni
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre
Publication Year: 1994
Total Pages: 468
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

Page 120

65
Sayyambhava gave away all the sacrificial material to the priest whom he thanked for revealing the true faith and went out in search of the two monks and thus arrived at the feet of Prabhava. He requested him to impart the true faith and accordingly Sayyambhava was enlightened. He took to renunciation and studied the Fourteen Purva texts.
But when he renounced the worldly life, his family, his wife and every thing, his wife was pregnant. Now this was not exactly the right thing to do. But he did leave her. She often felt during her pregnancy the movement of the foetus inside and said that there was a little something there. When in due course a son was born, he was given the name Manaka or Mannaga which meant a little some thing as the mother had called him during pregnancy.
When Manaka was about eight, he asked his mother about his father and when he was told that the father had become a monk, the boy left his house to go out in search of his father. When the father and son really met, it was in the city of Campā. They both felt inexplicable affection for each other at their first meeting. The boy gave him a detailed account of everything at home and how much he had longed to see him. But the father pretended that he was not exactly his father but an intimate friend of his father, and said that he could as well renounce the world immediately and go to meet the father. Young Manaka agreed and the monk, who was none else but Sayyambhava himself came to realise through his meditative powers that the boy was not going to live beyond six months. Therefore he decided to make him accept the monastic way of life immediately then and there and teach him Ten Purva texts in their abridged form instead of the usual Fourteen. The boy agreed to this arrangement and the two sat down to the sacred tuition late in the evenings. This is the reason why these ten texts came to be known as Dasavaikålika - Ten Texts taught at odd time.