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RELIGION
was formerly commander-in-chief of Benares.' He built his hermitage somewhere in the Vindhya region on the Godhavari. When he retired from the world, many others accompanied him. The number of hermits grew so large that he was compelled to ask his chief disciples to shift elsewhere taking with them as many of the hermits as possible under the circumstances. By his command they went to build hermitages in different kingdoms and countries. Kisavaccha was one of them. Sarabhanga is described as a hermit who wore three garments of birch-bark. According to the Aranyakaṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa Sarabhanga's hermitage was situated not far from Pañcavaţi, It was Sarabhanga who keeping Rama in his view, entered the burning funeral pyre and proceeded to the eternal world of Brahma in the resurrected divine form of a kumāra. It was undoubtedly a common practice with some of the hermits to die like heroes either by diving into water, or by bodily walking into fire or by a fall from a height.
217
The isipabbajja of Mahagovinda, the Brahmin Purohita of king Reņu of Videha, accompanied by the seven reigning kings, six other Purohitas in a large retinue of the citizens of seven kingdoms, as described in the Mahagovinda Suttanta1
1 Digha, ii, p. 220f.
