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Bhagawan Mahavir ]
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boat and its passengers to the mercy of Providence. When the passengers saw the boatman so much dejected and disappointed they lost all hopes of their lives and thinking that the last-moment had come they burst them-selves with various kinds of prayers.
The scriptures deal at length with the advantages of the company of the good and saintly. Even to-day its value is not decreased. Whenever we are too much vexed with our daily life, whenever we are in utter want of recreation, or whenever some secret anxiety troubles us, we too can partly remove our mental affliction and uneasiness by studying the scriptures or by keeping company with the saints. When such a great soul as the Lord himself was there, the crosssing of an ordinary river of this world should not have been regarded as perilous. But on account of their ignorance, narrowness of outlook and perversity of mind the passengers could not understand the Lord and his ability; they could not even imagine that the man sitting beside them was possessed of radiant spiritual lustre. On the contrary, some of them began to shower abusive words on the Lord, when they saw that he was sitting quite carelessly without doing anything. They did not think that “In prosperity the heart of the great becomes gentle like a lotus-flower, while in calamity it is hardened like the rock of a great mountain."
By this time, Sambala and Kambala, the two Naga Kumara gods, had come to know of this sudden calamity of the Lord. Sudrishta belonged to the same species as these gods did; but as he was nearing the end of his celestial life his power was gradually waning, while these two gods who
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