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| Mahavira's severe Restrictions in Kaushambi
but he would not listen to her. As a rule the lascivivus become fearless as well as shameless. He passionately stretched his hand towards the Queen. But the Queen, thinking it impossible to protect her chastity and her piety from that wicked man, killed herself at once. Such mothers are really praiseworty. They can glorify any nation or country. Crush them under rocks, bite them with poisonous snakes or birn their body in a blazing fire, but really chaste women would not be persuaded to surrender their chastity. They are not so much particular about their life in this world or the next world, as they are about the protection of their chastity. And the queen Dharini observed this rule in toto. The soldier was very sorry to see that the queen had killed herself. Vasumati began to weep bitterly., so very bitterly that her tears even melted the heart of the wicked soldier. He took pity on her, and assured her to treat her as his own daughter. Vasumati, now, had no other choice then to remain with the soldier. The soldier took off the ornaments from the dead body of the Queen, and leaving it in the jungle drove home with Vasumati.
When the wife of the soldier saw him coming home accompanied by a very beautiful maid, she scolded him very much. The Soldier had to put out of his mind the promises and assurances that he had made to Vasumati, and was compelled to sell her in the market at that very moment. He put her for sale in the midst of a large gathering of people, and at last sold her to a prostitute for five hundred gold coins but unfathomable is the depth of Destiny.
There was no limit now to the sorrows of Vasumati, but she did not lose patience even at this time. We must
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