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 187

132
is as follows :
In the city of Ksitipratisthita, king Jitasatru ruled. Once he ordered a construction of a hall of paintings and assigned the work of drawing and painting to the head of every family of painters that lived in the town, to ensure equal share of work to each one of them. Accordingly many painters started painting. Amongst them was an old man, Citrangada by name and every day his young daughter Kanakamañjari brought him his meals. One day as she was going with her father's lunch towards the hall of paintings, a horseman came running at full speed on the road which was crowded with people and the girl felt terribly scared. When she met her father, she described the whole scene to him. The father asked her to wait till he returned after washing himself. Kanakamañjari looked around at all the paintings and to while away her time, she picked up a brush and colours and painted on the floor of the hall a peacock's feather which looked marvellously natural.
King Jitasatru in the meantime came to the hall to see how the work was progressing. He looked at the painting of the peacock feather and mistook it for a real feather and stretched out his hand to pick it up. Kanakamañjari laughed and made a remark "While I reflected a chair does not stand on three legs and sought the fourth, foolish man, I have now found you as the fourth leg." The king could not have understood anything out of this cryptic comment of the girl. So he asked her to explain it fully. She said, "While I brought my father his meal, a man rode a horse in hot haste on the king's high way. He had not a bit of pity for old people, children, women and all other weak people on the high way that could have been trampled down. Therefore this horseman being an arrant fool is the chair's one leg. The second leg is the king by whom the hall has been assigned to the painters in equal share. In the individual families there are many painters. My father is firstly without a son, secondly an old man, thirdly poor. But although he is such, an equal share of work has been set down for him (which he cannot do under the circumstances). The third leg is my father here because while painting at this picture gallery, he has spent what he had earned before; now I bring him any food I get and when it has come he