________________ 128 Siri Sirivalakaba months. Besides these, there is one part of Pajusana, the holiest days of the Jainas; and the two ETFs for propitiating the Navapada occuring in the mouth of 1916 and the respectively as referred to in sts 217 to 219 of our text. Among these six spect the last two are held to be over-lasting ( TT eart ) hy the Jainas and special worship is performed of the Navapada in the days of these two argys in order to propitiate it (i. e. the Navapada or the Siddhachakra ). One more special feature to be noted in these two Tags is, as is well-known, that the Jainas -sadhus and sadhwis, shrayakas, and shravikas--all read or hear the * Rasa' or * Charitra' of King Shripala translated in verse or prose in the vernacular and based on our text or similar other books in Sanskrit or Prakrit dealing with the lives of King Shripala and his queen Mayanasundari. The more learned sadhus, however, read and explain before a large audience Ratnas'ekhara's Sirivalakaha, in Prakrit i. e. the very text that we are studying, here. From this we can understand the importance of our text which has become a source of enlightenment and devotion to many a religious-minded person. One more point that still remains to be noted is that in the two
