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Meghamālin's attack and conversion
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about to enter the water, a Vidyādhara Sage warned him that there was no profit in cutting the branch, but that he must cut the karma root of the tree of misfortune: Make the great elixir of the Jina take away every sickness!' When Datta asked what was that elixir, the Rishi replied: The five-fold vows, accompanied by perfection, and overthrow of mental blindness.' Datta was converted. One day he went into a cāitya and asked a Sage there, whether or not a person with his affliction was fit to worship the gods. The Sage replied that even ascetics worshiped the gods with bodies fouled by dirt. He then told him that he would be reborn as a cock. When Datta was distressed at this prospective misery, he consoled him by the promise that, after having fulfilled his karma, he would see a Sage in Rājagsha, would remember his former birth, would then die from fasting, and ultimately become Içvara, king in Rājapura. 'All this happened as predicted, and now, O Minister, I who came in this royal procession to do honor to Pārçvanātha, have remembered my former birth’ (150-165).
Frame story: Life of Pārçvanātha, continued.
Meghamālin's attack and conversion
Having worshiped Pārçva, Icvara had a cāitya built on the spot where the Saint had been in kāyotsarga posture. In it he placed an image of the Saint. The cāitya then obtained the name Kukkuțeçvara,? the city there being called Kukkuțeçvara. The Lord then wandered again, surveying the earth, to find the place where dwelled the enemy Illusion. The Asura Meghamālin (formerly Katha: see v. 68), prompted by his prenatal
"Cock-icvara, symbolizing the prenatal history of the king.
