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JAINISM: A THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY "GOD IN JAINISM”
Meghamālin. The Digambara Padmakīrti, too, in his Pāsaņāhacariu calls him Meghamālī, an “Asurendra”.47
Kamatha-tāpasa who was reborn as a Samvara or Sambara (Dig.) or Meghamāli (Svet.), tried hard to shake Pārśva from his trance. For seven days he poured heavy rains, made terrifying sounds and hurled rocks at him. To frighten Pārsva he conjured up lions, scorpions, terrific Vetāla-genie who spit fire from their mouths. But the great sage, unaffected by these harassments (upasargas), remained steadfast in meditation. Dharaṇa, the Indra of the Nāgakumāra gods, remembering the good turn done by Pārśva in his previous āśrama, came to his rescue. Standing behind the Jina, the Nāgendra held a canopy of his seven hoods over the Jina's head in order to protect the lord from rains, bombardment of rocks, etc. Dharana's chief queens (four) staged dance with music before the meditating sage but the great sage Pārsva was equally unmindful of the pleasure of music and dance and the pain inflicted by Sambara or Meghamālī. His villainy going fruitless, the lord of the demons relented and bowing down before the Lord Pārsva, seeking as he did the Jina's forgiveness and returned with remorse to his celestial abode. It is said that Meghamālī had so much flooded the area that water level rose up to the tip of the nose of Pārśva and that the Dharaṇendra, wrapping his coil all around the body of Pārsva and holding the hood as a canopy over the sage's head, had lifted up the body of Pārśva above water.
There are various places, sculptures depicting this episode of Kamatha's attack, from both northern and southern India. A study of all sculptures depicting this incident shows that the earliest
*'U.P. Shah, “ The Historical origin and Ontological interpretation of Arhat Pārsva”, in Arhat Pärśva and Dharanendra Nexus, P-29
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