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108
Life and Stories of Pārçvanātha
SARGA THE FIFTH
Frame story: Early life of the Arhat Pārçvanātha
The soul of the lion (see 4.146), after passing thru wretched animal existences, was reincarnated as Katha, the son of a Brahman, named Rora. Both his parents died as soon as he was born, so that he had to be brought up by charity. As a grown man, he also carried on a miserable existence, wandering from house to house, shy and given to fear. One day, observing some rich men, resplendent in their finery, he became disgusted with life. Concluding that the rich owed their opulence to their penances in some previous existence, he decided to follow their example, turned ascetic, and subsisted on the roots of plants (8).
The soul of Suvarnabālu, on the other hand, was reincarnated in the womb of Vāmādevī, queen of the mighty Ikşvāku king Açvasena of Vārāṇasī (Benares). The soul descended on the fourth day of the dark half of the month Cāitra, under the constellation Viçākhā. Fourteen great dreams of the queen, here explained elaborately in a kind of key, or traumschlüssel,' announced to her the arrival of a glorious and virtuous son (37). At the end of an undisturbed period of pregnancy, the queen was delivered on the tenth day of the black half of the month Pāuşa, under the constellation Viçākhā (43). All nature rejoiced at the event. The eight' region maidens' (dikkumāri) of the lower world came on to acclaim the mother of the world, who had furnished the torch that
* Tenth and last pre-birth of the Kamatha soul, the future Meghamålin. * See additional note 10, on p. 189.
