Lilavati Sara

Author(s): Jinratnasuri, H C Bhayani, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 19

10
Lilāvsti-sära
to the king with a request to keep it under his charge for a fortnight as it contained his all. The king put it under heavy guard. The minister spent his days in religious meditation. On the thirteenth day there was a great commotion in the royal palace due to the complaint by the princess Ratnāvalı that the minister's son Subuddhi had cut her braid. The king was all wrath and rushed his soldiers to arrest Buddhisāgasa. The latter requested the king through a friend to give him an audience, since the wealth of the minister was already in the king's possession. The king consented. The minister requested him to open the box which was kept under the royal protection. When the box was opened everybody saw in it Subuddhi with an unsheathed sword and a lock of hair in hand. Everybody was wonderstruck. One of the ministers suspected a lapse on the part of the guards, but they denied it firmly. Buddhisagara explained how he planned to counteract the predicted ill luck. The king rewarded him. (The sno-story ends here).
(The story of Vasundbara resumed)
Then Sägaradatta performed the necessary rites as suggested by the astrologer, and the son was named Vasundhara on the twelth day.
After some time, during a famine, the whole family except Vasundhara was killed in an epidemic of small-pox. Vasundhara could get out of the house through a hole made by the dogs to enter the house to get at the corpses. By the time Vasundhara was five years of age, the famine ended. When he came of age he left in the company of some earavaneers and reached the city of Kșitipratistha, where he posed as a great ascetic. Through vanity and jealousy once Vasundhara plotted to defame the Jain monk Suvratācārya with the help of hired harlots, but on investigation the king found the monk innocent. At night the presiding goddess of the Jaina Order enticed Vasundhara idto sexual union with her. She assumed during the act the form of a bitch and thus got him stuek up in the obscene posture. Thus exposed, he was publicly censured. Believing this to be a plot of the Jaina monks, he set their residence on fire. He was arrested and oredered to be executed. He died on the stake and was consigned to hell for some time.
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The Story of Yasomati (118-182)
The soul of Vasundhara was reborn as a girl named Yasomati to Rädhā, the wife of Yajñadatta, who was a learned Brahmia in a village called Gorvara. She was married quite young to Somadeva who