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INTRODUCTION to this effect and suggested to him that he would be going in the right direction if he resumed the Jain vows. Somila did so and after a long practice of the Jain vows, he died and was born as planet śukra, Venus (89-106).
The fourth chapter of this section narrates the story of a lady named Subhadrā, who longed for children but had none. When she met a band of Jain nuns, Suvratās, she asked them if they knew any means by which she would get a child. They. however, said that as Jain nuns they could not tell her anything of that sort, but would preach her the Jain doctrine alone. On hearing this doctrine Subhadra first became a disciple and later became a nun of the band of Suvratās. Her longing for children, however, did not disappear, and in that life of a nun she began to fondle children of other people. She received admonitions from nuns on this account but in vain. She then left the upāśraya of Suvratās to live apart from them and continued to indulge in nursing children of others. She continued to practise the Jain vows, but owing to this flaw could not attain a higher place in heavenly regions than that of an attending goddess Bahuputrikā. She waited on Indra, the lord of gods, and by her divine power produced many boys and girls before him. In her next birth this goddess was born in a Brahmin family and was named Somă.
