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वृषभ
and was influencing the ignorant masses with his harsh but ill conceived penance.
When prince Parshva came near the mendicant he saw that some logs of wood were burning all around the mendicant. Inside one of the logs was a pair of serpents, writhing in pain due to the intense heat of the burning flames. Moved by a feeling of compassion the prince said to the mendicant, "Burning a five sensed being in fire, what sort of self improvement do you strive for ?" The mendicant replied angrily, “Prince ! You are a child; go and enjoy your princely games. It is mendicants like me who know about religion not you. How can you claim that some being is burning in the fire around me?" (P-3/1)
All the efforts to persuade him that a pair of serpents was burning in the fire went in vain. Parshva then ordered his attendants to draw the specific log aside and split it. As soon as the attendants did that, a pair of serpents, partially scorched, fell on the ground writhing in pain. Realizing that they were about to die, prince Parshva said to them that they should not be annoyed with the ignorant mendicant and should remain equanimous during the last moments of their lives. He also recited the Namokar Mantra. As a result of equanimous thoughts and hearing the Namokar Mantra, after death the pair was born as the king and queen of the gods of the Nag Kumar clan (Dharanendra and Padmavati). (P-3/2)]
The mendicant became angry and kept on adding more fuel to the fire of vengeance. After death he reincarnated as the evil god Meghmali.
This incident inspired Parshva Kumar to step on the right path and show the path to the masses misled by such ignorant hypocretes. While he was contemplating this, he one day went to a garden and chanced to see some frescoes about the incidents of life of Bhagavan Arishtanemi. These vivid paintings pushed him to the decision of becoming an ascetic. He sought permission of his father and started the year long charity. On the eleventh day of the dark half of the month of Paush he became an ascetic under an Ashok tree.
One day Parshva-muni was standing in meditation in Kaushamb jungle. God Dharanendra arrived there to pay homage. When he saw scorching sun rays falling on the meditating ascetic, he covered Parshva-muni with a canopy of snake hoods. It is said that this area later became famous as Ahichhatra.
One day Parshva-muni was-standing in meditation under a banyan tree in an Ashram outside a village. The evil god Meghmali, the Kamath of earlier birth, through his evil powers became aware of this. Driven by the animosity of earlier births, Meghmali arrived at the spot where Parshva-muni was standing in meditation. He took the form of a ghost and tried to disturb Parshva-muni with his extremely loud and fearsome laughter. When Parshva-muni remained unmoved, Meghmali inflicted pain on him by attacking in the form of various Illustrated Tirthankar Charitra
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