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MAHĀVIRA’S PREDECESSORS
and the interval of time between him and his predecessor
was nine crores of sāgara. 11. Śre- King Vişņudeva, who ruled in Simhapuri, possessed yāṁsanātha,
a most beautiful throne, but unfortunately an evil spirit took up his abode in it, so that no one dare sit there. His wife, however, so longed to sit on it that she determined to do so at any risk; to cvery one's astonishment she was quite uninjured, so, when her son was born, he was named Sreyāmsanātha, the Lord of Good, for already he had enabled his mother to cast out an evil spirit and so do a world of good (śreyārsa). His sign is the rhinoceros; one crore of sāgara of time had intervened before his
birth; and his height was cighty bow-shots. 12. Vāsu. Before the birth of the twelfth Tirthankara the gods pūjya.
Indra and Vasu used to go and worship the father of the future saint, and as the father's name was Vasupūja and the god Indra used to give him jewels called vasu, the child was naturally enough called Vāsupūjya. His sign is the male buffalo, and he passed to mokşa from his birthplace, Campāpuri, accompanied by six hundred Sādhus. Fifty-four sāgara of time had intervened, and his height
was seventy arrow-shots. 13. Vima. The sign of the thirteenth Tirthankara is the boar. anātha. He got his name Vimaļanātha, Lord of Clcarness, through
the clearness (vima!atā) of intellect with which he endowed his niother before his birth, and which she displayed in the following manner. A certain man and his wife unwisely stayed in a temple inhabited by a female demon, who, falling in love with the husband, assumed his real wife's form. The miserable man was quite unable to tell which was his true wife, and asked the king of Kampilapura to distinguish between them. It was the queen, however, who solved the difficulty. She knew the long reach that witches and only witches have, and telling the husband to stand a long distance off, challenged the two wives to prove their chastity by touching him. Both
