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પ્રકરણ, ]
SPIRITUAL LIGHT.
were
Dungara, Kudunga and Sagara, who married respectively Shila, Nikriti and Sanchayā. Agnishikha, the wife of Rudradeva, was matchlessly beautiful and excellently virtuous. Rudradeva and his wife easily excitable to anger and rage, his three sons were also under the influence of pride, deceit and greed. So the strong influence of passions reduced the whole family to ruin. Once upon a time Rudradeva being displeased with his sons gave to his wife one thousand golden coins to keep under the seal of silence and buried two thousand coins for himself underneath the ground. This worldly caution created the notions of distrust, deceit and greed in the family members.
So Nikriti and Sanchaya tried their best to please their mother-in law with pretended humility and feigned courtesy and thereby extracted from her the secret of the treasure-ground. Similarly, Kudanga and Sagara squeezed out the desired secret from Rudradeva. When the deceitful sons and their wives got the desired wealth, they grew indifferent and cool towards their elders. It is quite clear that duplicity brought on by greed was not checked even by feel
ings of parental love or respect, but on the contrary
M
it urged them on to wicked acts of stealing the wealth-the vital Prānās of their elders. When the parents knew these foul deeds they were highly enraged. Now, anger, the wicked passion, worked out its own part. Rudradeva scolded his wife for revealing the secret. She also retorted to her husband with double poignancy. The quarrel ended in the 621
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