Jain Journal 1981 04

SR No.: 520062
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1981
Total Pages: 79
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 6 MB

Page 15

APRIL, 1981
129
Svetambara sect, he gives an account which differs in several details from Jinasena's. The second contest, according to Hemacandra, is not a water fight, but a voice fight, where the parties have to out-shout each other. Here again Bahubali wins ; his voice grows louder, while that of his brother, weaker and weaker. The last fight is not just boxing and wrestling but a sort of fencing with wooden staffs as well.
When the discus is flung at him and bounces back to Bharata, Bahubali is in such a rage that he runs to kilt Bharata, and is suddenly struck with shame at the thought. He then becomes a monk on the spot, tearing his hair out (as Jain monks do at initiation) like so many tufts of grass. He stands quite still on the battlefield itself and does his penance there, deciding not to go to his brothers for fear of being thought in ferior to them because of his later choice of the path of deliverance, He plans to visit them after enlightenment. This is how Hemacandra describes Bahubali's penance :
“The blessed Muni, Bahubali, remained there alone, as if sprung from the earth, as if fallen from the sky. Devoted to meditation, his eyes fixed on the end of his nose, motionless, the Muni appeared like a sign-post. Like a forest tree, his body endured the wind in the hot season spreading hot grains of sand like grains of fire. Plunged in the nectar of good meditation, he was unconscious of the sun in the middle of the hot season, like a fire pit, over his head. Covered from head to foot with mud made from dust and perspiration caused by the heat, he looked like a boar that had come out of mud. In the rainy season he was no more disturbed by streams of water than a mountain by trees shaken by wind and rain. He was not shaken from kāyotsarga nor from meditation by the flashes of lightning nor by the mountain peaks shaken by thunder-storms. Both of his feet were covered with moss caused by dripping water, like the steps of a deserted village-tank. In the winter season in which elephant-deep streams were frozen he remained comfortable from the fire of meditation active in burning the fuel of karma. On winter nights when trees were frozen by cold, Bahubali's pious meditation bloomed especially, like jasmines (which flower during winter in India).
“Forest buffaloes scratched themselves on him just as on the trunk of a huge tree, at the same time splitting their horns. Families of rhinoceroses experienced the delight of sleep at night resting with their bodies on his body, just as on a mountain side. Elephants pulling at his hands and feet with the idea they were olibanum-shoots, were often embrassed, unable to pull them up. Herds of yaks, their faces upturned, licked