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[The Attainment of Right Faith by A Yaksha
just like inviting death to devour oneself and then to try to escape alive from his jaws. We would therefore request you to change your mind and stay somewhere else rather than in the abode of the Yaksha. We are at your disposal and will make all arrangements for you if you like. But the Lord could not be frightened in this way. He firmly rejected the proposal of those people, who now felt constrained to let him live wherever he liked. The Lord now started for his destination.
After reaching there, the Lord took his abode in one corner of the Yakshalaya (temple of yaksha) and giving up all thought of his body, kept standing in meditation. Evening came. The priest asked him not to stay there longer; but his words produced no effect upon the Lord. Hé stood meditating quite as fearlessly as before. After some time, the priest too went away leaving the Lord quite alone in the temple of the Yaksha.
The night fell, and the denser the darkness became the more afraid were the villagers for the life of the Lord. At his fixed time, the Yaksha came. But when he saw the Lord standing there in the guise of an ascetic, his anger knew no bounds. He tried to frighten him away in various ways. First, he gave a loud roar, to hear which the wild beasts were terrified, the birds fell down from the trees, and the peacocks began to trumpet taking it to be the noise of the thunder, but it produced no effect on Lord Mahavira. Next, he assumed gigantic shapes of huge animals and fearful monsters and tried to frighten the Lord but in vain. The third time, he took the shape of a very hideous snake, and began to hiss before the Lord. He bit the Lord at many places, but could not thereby disturb him in his meditation. His poison prove
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