Shravakachar of Vasunandini

Author(s): Signe Kirde
Publisher: Signe Kirde

Page 91

5.6 Suffering of Animals and Plants 5 TRANSLATION: ŚR (57-205)
lustrated in an episode of Hemacandra's Parisista-parvan VI.251 The monk Annikaputra instructs a queen who is tortured by nightmares. The royal woman perceives the suffering of creatures in the hell every early morning in her dreams. She observes those beings weeping and mourning in the darkness. The monk who had been called upon to interpret her dreams explains to her the categories of truth and the means to attain final emancipation. At last, the woman realises her errors and repents.
173-175) According to the scriptures of the best of the Jinas, the shortest period [of the minimum of life-time] in the first hell can last 10 000 years, the longest is one period "measured by oceans".
You should know that the longest [life-time period], beginning with the first ground of earth, rises in the amount with the number of periods "measured by oceans", successively from the second hell onwards to three, seven, ten, seventeen, twenty-two and thirty-three [myriads].
⚫ sayarôvama Vasunandin employs the term "measured by oceans" for the cosmic period of time, sagarôpama. The term stands for a "myriad", an immeasurable, uncountable period. Especially in this context it denotes the longest time-sequence of the life-time when the sentient being takes rebirth in lower regions. "The [number given for the] maximum duration for the first hell is, with an increase, the [number for the] minimum duration concerning the second [hell] and the others; [you should] know that the maximal duration for the second and other hells has been taught by the Jinas to increase successively: 3. 7, ..., 33" (Prof. Balbir, p.c.).252
176) In this way this sentient being endures the intense suffering in manifold ways with body and mind as the result of vices. This corresponds to the duration of the life-time-periods [to spend in the grounds of earth already described].
5.6 Suffering of Animals and Plants
Suffering when being reborn as Animal and Plant (tiriya-gadidukkha)
177-178) But also [when having left the lower world] it [= the sentient being] dwells in the various types of bodies of stationary beings in the rebirth
251 See the story of Annikaputra in Hemacandra's Parisiṣṭa-parvan VI (Hertel 1908:164). 252 Cf. also Ts III.6 with nearly the same numerical set and Mac XII.1116.
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