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RIŞABHA DEVA
conceive or give birth to children. They form: companionate marriages, and spend their time in ease and happiness. The little food that is needed is obtained from certain kinds of trees, that do not need to be grown or looked after.
The softer sex, it would seem, is represented much more numerously in the heavens than the other one. It may be that women are given to the practising of self-denying austerities in a greater measure than men all the world over, and, therefore, readily reach heavens in larger numbers. However that may be, there are a larger number of deva-ladies than devas, in the lower heavens.
Mahābala, too, had four thousand companionate wives, in the second heaven. But his favourite devāngnā (queen) was the beautiful Svayam Prabhā, who was passionately devoted to him. She was a very lovely lady. The two were almost always together, and found much joy in each other's company. Together they would resort to the celestial pleasances, and roam about, hand in hand, over hill and dale, inhaling the beauty of nature, the beauty which the mortal eye has not seen nor the 'mortal ear heard of. Together, too, they would go to worship the God Arhant Deva (Tirthamkara) in the Celestial Fanes. In this way they spent the incalculably
