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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
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35.
Being informed of this at day-break the king arrived at the spot and took up the babe in his hands, when, instantly, the following verse slipped out of the latter's mouth:
यो मे गर्भस्थतस्याऽपि
पूर्ति कल्पितवान् पयः । शेषवृत्तिविधानाय
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
किंवा सुप्तोऽथवा मृतः ॥ *
"Is He, who had managed for my subsistence even before my birth by creating mother's milk, asleep or dead now that it is time to manage for my further maintenance?!"
The king adopted the boy as his son, named him Śripuñja and enthroned him at the appropriate time.
This king Sripuja begot a monkey-faced daughter named Srimata, who, one day, on hearing songs eulogizing mt. Arbuda (mod. mt. A bu), recollected her past birth, and, being pressed by her father, she told him that in the previous birth she was a female monkey who jumped upon the top of a peak of the mountain over the lake called Käyäkuṇḍa, curious to see an attractive scene, when, bitten by a snake from the bamboo-groves, she expired. In due course hier body dropped down into the Kāyākunda but the head still remained hanging in the bamboo-grove over the lake; that was why she did not have a buman head.
The king made an enquiry and caused the licad be thrown down in the lake and forthwith the princess' head turned human.
All the same determined not to marry, she set out for pilgrimage and finally settled on the same mountain practising penance, in course whereof Rasiyaka, a mendicant, was stupefied by her. After death Śrīmātā became the tutelary deity of the mountain,
10. THE STORY OF GALA SRI VARDDHAMANASURI
King Bhaspati Rapaka was ruling over Vamanasthali, the miniature Kasmira, where lived the pontiff Varddhamana
* This verse is found in Sărngadharapaddhati as no. 312 with slight vari ants. Also found in Subhășitaratnabhāndāgāra as verse 4 cn p. 75 in the section on Santosaprasamsă and PPS p. 84, verse 270.
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