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All this is alright. But the wonder of wonders is how did the elephant escape from the stable. Could not the Mahout hold him?
JAIN JOURNAL
The Mahout was careless, or else he could not chain the elephant with his best efforts. Now let us see how the Prince holds the elephant.
How can the Prince stop the elephant without the use of the bow and arrow ?
[Laughter] Must he use your bow and arrow? He has finer weapons in his armoury. The arrow you use must kill; and killing to him is biggest violence.
[Pensive] Violence or no violence, it will be hell to us if the elephant attacks the Prince in rage.
[Casually] At worst we shall be imprisoned by King Siddhartha for the unpardonable offence of leaving the Prince alone unprotected.
Why should we be imprisoned? We were all the time willing to accompany the Prince. It is he who held us back.
Our offence is we let the Prince go to face the elephant. We were duty bound to stop him.
I did stop him, but he paid no heed to me. On the contrary, he welcomed an attack by the elephant.
Whatever will be, will be. But the leaving of the Prince alone unarmed is not good. He saw danger in our accompanying him, but we sense danger in not accompanying him.
Now nothing can be done. May Lord Parshvanath protect us. How well it might have been had we accompanied the Prince. If the elephant attacked him, we could protect him and win our reward.
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