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255 All these days added together make a total of 480 days or sixteen months.
By practising such exalted, extensive, noble, auspicious, sple. ndid, excellent, brilliant and magnanimous austerities continuously for sixteen months, both the sâdhus-Sumanobhadra and Supratistha attained a very high Stage of Spirituality.
During the day, they kept their eyes fixed towards the Sun, and sat in a place exposed to the rays of the Sun, with a posture in which the lower portion of the body did not touch the ground. At night, they kept sitting in a posture known as viră sana*, without covering their bodies with any cloth.
By exposing themselves to various inclemencies of weather, keeping their bodies in in-convenient postures, and by observing a continuous series of fastings with very frugal break-fasts taken at long intervals, the bodies of the two sādhus became dried up, withered, destitute of fat and flesh and with bones covered only with skin. When they walked about, all their bones made a crackling sound. The arteries and veins of their bodies became very prominent. They did walking, sitting and other physical acts mostly under the exertion of will-power. They became so enfeebled that they were feeling exhausted just after finishing their speech, or even while they were talking. Although there was wasting of their fat and flesh, yet like fire embeded in ashes, their bodies had the luster and calmness of austerities,
At last, bolh the sâdhus, knowing that they were greatly enfeebled and yet so long as they had the vigour and ability to walk, they thought it advisable to approach śramaņa Bhagavāna Mahavira Coming to the Worshipful Bhagavāna, they
*Virāsana is a kind of sitting posture assumed by ascetics, imitating a man sitting in a chair, and maintaining the same posture even when the chair is removed.
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