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 206

23. ARISTANEMI CARITRA
Queen Sivādevi of Samudravijaya of Saurikapura, a city in Bhāratvarsa which is situated in Jambudvipa, gave birth to a son on the fifth day of the bright half of Sravana and was named Aristanemi. Before he took his birth in the royal house of Samudravijaya, Aristanemi had completed a life span of thirtytwo sägaropamas in Aparajita Mahāvimana. His mother had conceived him on the twelfth day of the dark half of Kārtika at midnight in Citra constellation. Aristanemi lived in the palace of his parents as a kumāra for three hundred years before he took orders on the sixth day of the bright half of Srāvana. Nearly a thousand of his friends and followers also accepted the religious order along with him.
In the course of his spiritual pursuits, he was once lost in meditation for fifty four nights and days, during which period he experienced complete detachment of himself from his body. On the next day that is the fiftyfifth day of his meditation which happened to be the fifteenth day of the dark half of Asvina, Aristanemi attained kevalajñāna - the ultimate knowledge - at midnight in the Citra constellation. This was on the mount Ujjayanta where he was practising astama bhakta penace without water.
As a kevalin, with that supreme enlightenment which had come to him, he travelled every where on this earth for seven hundredi years and enlisted eighteen thousand disciples. He also had eighteen ganas and eighteen ganadharas.
On the mount Ujjayanta he observed a rigorous fast for one full month without water. On the eighth day of the bright half of Aşadha