________________
104
Some Aspects of Indi Canuiture
a view to bringing him round to accept worldly life. In order to carry out his mission he will come to the bed chamber and see Jambu unaffected by passion or any such worldly desire and surrounded by his newly married wives. The thief will try to stress on his mind that if he did not make up his mind for the enjoyment of worldly pleasures and banked upon heavenly ones, he will meet with the same fate as that camel which died after having eaten sweet grass. In order to silence him Jambu told a counter-story of a bania afflicted with a burning fever. Finally, by the souna arguments of Jambu, the thief will lose the battle and become converted to Jambu's point of view. So also will the wives and mother of Jambu. Knowing Jambu's fully developed detachment, his relatives, king Kuņika with his army and god Añadhiya - all - will come to celebrate Jambu's initiation ceremony. Then, seated in a divine vehicle, Jambu will come over to me on this very mountain while Vidyutprabha and his 500 fellow thieves will go to Sudharma. After passing a period of 12 years of omniscience, I shall achieve emancipation and Sudharma will get omniscience. After twelve years Sudharma will get emancipation and Jambu, omniscience. For 40 years Jambu will move about preaching and enlightening. Hearing this narration which is in a way an eulogy of his own family, god Anadhiya got up and began to dance. On being requested by Śrenika, Gautam briefly outlined the previous births of Añadhiya. Arhaddāsa's brother, Jinadasa, ruined himself due to addiccions but as he repented afterwards he got god hood.
Having heard these things, Srenika expressed his desire to hear something about the previous lives of the god, Vidyunmāli and they were told.
Now, the whole narrative told before, births of sivakumara. Sagardatta, Bhavadatta, Bhavadeva-and that concerning the four goddesses who would become the four wives of Jambu in the birth to come follows closely the account found in the Vasudevahindi, the only diffirence being one of the proper nouns e.g. the village Vțddha, the village chieftain Rāştrakūta and the wife Nāgasri. The additional character of the nun to enlighten Bhavadeva is also there.
Besides the Vasudevahiņời and Uttarapurāņa, the story which is found in the ninth chapter of Haribhadra's Samarāiccakahā resembles in structure the story dealing with the last birth of Jambu. It is as follows:
Prince Samarāditya, according to the Samarāiccakahā, was brilliant, learned, brave, and courageous. But he developed aversion to the pleasures of the world from his very infancy due to the effect of the Karmas done in the previous births. As the parents insisted, he had to go in for marriage with two very beautiful brides. But instead of falling into the trap of their amorous gestures and all that, the prince started talking with the two female friends of the brides at whom he did not even care so much as to look. On the contrary, the prince who thought of putting the two brides on the right track, told them the story the motif of which was illicit love that was formed between Rati and Subhankarakumara just analogous to that which the queen Vibhramā had for Lalitanga in the Jambusāmicariu.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
