Jain Journal 1982 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 45

Prince Nemi’s Longing for Eternity
-Lalwani's Opera Nemi Pravajya
PARESH CHANDRA DASGUPTA
Perhaps, only on certain occasions to cherish a drama or an opera ceases to be a simple play, a simulation of life, and imparts an experience where the audience and those who act may feel the existence of a world like an imperishable star in outer space. To a philosopher or a poet such a play drawn from the legend of a Jaina Tirthankara may appear more enduring than mortal desire and more beautiful than the common reality of the world that only manifests before the limited tenure of existence. In the perspective of the rolling years of civilisation of the mankind which shows the increase of material progress and the path of human aspiration running or bending across landscapes of desolation or verdant plains of glory such legends promise of a love, peace and realisation more covetable than all the happiness of a paradise or any idyllic land as the one of the Hyperboreans yearned about and fabled in antiquity by the Greeks. Actually, the theme of Nemi Pravajyā that deals with the renunciation of Neminatha or Aristanemi, the 22nd Tirthankara, the younger cousin-brother of Krsna, has achieved a height where ascends the sun of ultimate truth with regard to the liberation of soul from all earthly attachments and thereby from the bondage of illusion and rebirths. Nemi looked towards the eternal knowledge and the freedom of soul which are much beyond the promise of a perpetual youth and the pleasures of heaven. As the account goes, Aristanemi, a Vrsni of heroic strength and personality was struck by the plaintive cries of animals gathered for food for royal banquets in connection with the proposed marriage of the noble-minded prince with Rajimati, the daughter of Ugrasena, once the king of Mathura and at this time the ruler of Girnar. The deep tone