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The Paramara Emperor Bhoja and Dhanapala : Mutual Relationship 99
(7) The next one criticizes in one full sweep the Brāhmaṇico-puranic beliefs about the cow-worship, the tree-worship, the sacrificial killing of a goat for attainig to heaven, the Sraddha ceremony, the untrustworthiness of the gods, the belief in sacrificial oblations reaching the gods through fire, and the authority of the Śruti,16
(8) Another incident censures the violence at the sacrificial ritual. The poet believed that the poor grass-eating animals deserved to be pitied rather than killed. Further he remarked caustically that if it be argued that the sacarificed animal attains to heaven, why do the sacrificer not offer their parents in the sacrificial fire and pack them off securely to the heaven.16
(9) The next incident has its roots in the caustic remarks again st hunting. Bhoja seems to have been enraged to the extent of thinking to get him secretly murdered so as not to be liable to public censure and consequent defamation.17 But the poet was accidently saved by his poetically skillful answer to the king's question as to why the old woman, passing on the road, was shakiug her head. The poet said that she was wondering whether be (i, e., Bhoja) was the famous Nandi, Murari, Cupid, Kubera, Vidyadhara, Indra, the Moon or Brahma; but at last she came to realise that he was but king Bhoja himself, superior to all of them !18
(10) Another incident is intended to emphasize the truthful propbetic authority of the Jaina Tīrthankaras in general, according to Merutunga, 19 and of Dhanapala in particular, according to Prabhācandra.20 The poet was asked as to by wbich door the king would go out of the temple. Dhanapala wrote the answer which was safely secured in a sealed envelope. Merutunga bolds that the poet pointed out to the answer being contained in the work entitled "Arhac-cūdamani'. According to Prabhacandra, the king then got a bole bored into the roof and went out through it !21 Merutunga, however makes the king get out through the underground passage dug in the middle of the temple hall.22 Next morning the envelope was opened and the king read the answer which tallied with what he had done. Prabhācandra's version praises a wise man's eye in the form of intelligence, while that of Merutunga eulogizes the truthfulness, and hence trustworthiness, of the Jaina works.28
(11) The next incident testifies to almost superhuman prophetic and poetic genius of Dhanapala. A traveller from Setubandha arrived at the court of Bhoja with a few fragments of inscriptional poetry and reported about the inscription on the temple submerged under the waters of the ocean. The traveller had brought a resin dye of it which contained a couple of incomplete verses. Dhanapala completed them and asserted that it must needs tally with the readings of the original ones on the temple
