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Mahavir's Birth & birth celebration
named Nandishwara ). Due to celestial agency, the whole function was over by the end of the night. As soon as the day dawned, all the gods and goddesses departed happily for their places. The king was very happy, He praised his luck and that of the queen again and again. His relatives too, came and congratulated him on his good luck. But, Ah! the joy of Trishala !! who can describe that ? we, at least, cannot with our material pen. Only he can do full justice to it who was there at that time to see everything with his own eyes. Even he too, may not, for the principle “words without sight and sight without words” applies to him also. The function of the tongue is to describe and not to see. It therefore, cannot do full justice to a thing which it has not seen for itself. Similarly, the function of the eyes is to see and not to describe, and it is impossible for a man to describe a thing properly until his eyes are endowed with speech. Hence conclude that even those people, who saw Trishala in her extreme joyfulness, cannot describe her properly.
Next day, after performing his daily routine, Siddhartha went to his council-chamber, where, according to the old tradition of the kings, he sent for the chief superintendent of jail and ordered him to set all the prisoners free in honour of his son's birth-day celebrations. The superintendent did as he was bid to do. It has become a custom with the kings from very ancient times to set the prisoners free on the occasion of a son's birth-celebrations, coronation, victory in the war and other such great functions. King Siddhartha, too, followed the same practice. He called an agsembly of his subjects, great and small, in his hall of state. There the king and his subjects showered boundless sympathies and
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