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Ancient Jaina Hymns
his age-old hatred was re-kindled. This hatred followed him into his next existence as the Asura Meghamālin, who again tried to worry Pārsva. Pārsva had, in the mean-time, become an ascetic and was wandering about in the wilderness. Meghamälin caused him to be attacked by ferocious beasts, nearly suffocated by dust-storms, and drenched by cloud-bursts, but did not succeed in disturbing the concentration of the Lord. In the end, the snake, whom the Lord had saved, and who had become re-incarnated as Dharaṇa, King of the serpent-demons, appeared with his consort Padmavatī, and both protected the Lord forming baldachins over him with their hoods. Reproached and enlightened by Dharaṇa, Meghamalin repented, asked the Lord's pardon, and, having attained spiritual enlightenment, found the path to salvation12. Dharana, or Dharanendra, however, kept serving the Lord Pārśva, and is still worshipped as his divine attendant and devotee, along with his spouse.
(12) Names of the male and female deities lieved to be in attendance, each couple on one of the Tirthankaras or his places of worship, as Dharaṇendra and Padmāvatī, mentioned just now, in Pārsva's case. Both are referred to in the Sankheśvara-Pārsvanāthastavana published below ( st. 9 and 10). These divine attendants of the Tirthankaras are generally known and worshipped as the Yakṣas and Yakṣinīs, or the Śāsanadevas and Sasanadevis, and are often found represented at the side of images of the Tīrthankaras.
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References to these divinities in this particular function are obviously restricted to post-canonical literature: the earliest being contained in Pādalipta's ‘Nirvāṇakalikā’13 ( according to Winternitz14, prior to the 5th century) on the Svetambara, and in Yativṛṣabha's Tiloyapanṇatti1s and Vasunandin's Pratiṣṭhāsāroddhāra1 (both about contemporaneous with the former) on the Digambara side. In Śvetambara canonical literature, the very expressions 'Śāsanadeva' and 'Śāsanadevī' do not occur, and the word 'Yakṣa' has a different sense. Generally, it stands as a denomination of one of the eight sub-classes of Vyantaras, which latter, in their turn, are
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