Life of Hemchandracharya

Author(s): Manilal Patel
Publisher: Singhi Jain Shastra Shiksha Pith Mumbai

Page 74

CHAPTER IX.-STOREIŚ ABOLIT HEMACANDRA AND KUMĀRAPĀLA 65 to the east on a swift dromedary. The full moon did really rise in the east, shone forth the whole night and the next morning set in the west! The royal messengers who had ridden far into the land, told the same story on their return. It was therefore no illusion that might have deceived the king's eyes, but a real miracle that Hemacandra worked with the help of a ministering godling who had given him a siddhacakra.103
The number of the legends of the second group is much smaller and almost all of them are met with already in the Prabhāvakacaritra. The first story, which is to show the attachment of the king to Hemacandra, relates about an amazing transformation of the ordinary palm trees of the royal garden into Śrītāla-trees. Once, it has been said, on account of copying the numerous works of Hemacandra, the palm-leaves were exhausted and there was no hope of getting a new stock imported from abroad. Kumārapāla was very much distressed at the thought of his teacher's work being interrupted. He went into his garden where many ordinary palm trees stood, worshipped them with fragrant substances and flowers, placed round their trunks golden wreaths adorned with pearls and rubics and prayed that they might be transformed into Śrītāla-trees. The next morning the gardeners announced that the king's wish had been fulfilled. The messengers who brought the happy news were richly rewarded, and the scribes worked further with greater zeal. This fable is quite similarly related by Jinamaņdana. He only commits an anachronism when he assumes that the scribes would have managed with paper which, however, the king did not think proper. As the close scrutiny of the old Jaina-Libraries has brought out, the use of paper was only introduced to Gujarat one hundred and twenty years later after the conquest of the land by the Muhammadans.204
A second and still greater proof of his devotion was furnished by Kumārapāla to his teacher by presenting his empire to Hemacandra. According to the Prabhāvakacaritra this happened on the occasion of explaining a Gathā which makes complete surrender a duty to the believer. Hemacandra refused, it is said, to accept the gift by arguing that as an ascetic he must be free from all possessions and from all desires. In spite of it, the king did not want to give in. Thereupon the minister intervened and proposed that Kumārapāla should remain the king but should fulfil the royal duties only with the approval of his Guru. The solution was accepted and Hemacandra wrote the Yogas'āstra with a view to instructing Kumārapāla as to how he should, as a believing king, behave himself.105
Very many particular but probably apocryphal accounts about Kumārapala's manifestations of his faith in the Jina are given by Jinamaņdana. There, he relates that the king had, after his conversion, given away to the Brāhmins all the images of Maheśvara and other gods „which his forefathers had worshipped, and that he only tolerated the statues of the Jinas in his palace.108 Moreover, in his long report of the taking of the twelve vows in the presence of Hemacandra, he describes in detail how the king fulfilled each of them and what Birudas or 'titles of honour' he received for the same. Amongst the laws, which the observance of the Jaina precepts is said to have caused, the following deserve special mention. In order to fulfil the seventh vow, which forbids unnecessary force and occupations connected therewith, the king renounced the