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delicious mcat dishes. This distinction carned for him not only ilic lordship of ten villages as a gift from the king, but also the title Ampla-rasāyana ("Abode of the Ambrosia Flavor"). The king died and his son who succeeded lo uic thronic came under the influence of a Jaina monk and gave up cating mca! aliogcther. He fired the cook and took away Hic ion villages previously granted to him by the dead king. The cook realized that a Jaina niendicant had deprived him of his living and deliberately sed diat monk a poisonous bitter gourd, as a result of which the monk died. Because of this cvil dccd, upon the cook's death his soul was born in hell. When eventually lic was rcborn as a fiuman being and had progressed cnouglı to become a Jaina nionk, hic performed the Simhanişkrīdila sast and, as a result, was (in his last birth) boni Krsna the Great Hero, a cousin-brother of the twenty-second Jina ca Nemi. One would expect Kșşņa to have by now given up all desire for mcal, but such was not Uic case. It is said that on the eve or Nemi's wedding, Krsna degliberately caused a great many animals to be penned in for Hic purpose of sccding thicir meal to the guests and, as a result, Nemi, utterly overcome by his compassion to the animals, renounced the world 10 become a Jaina mendican.25 Now it is well known that Jainas have always considered dicmselves to be vegetarians, especially at the time of Krşna and Jina Nemi, when the degenerate days of the pancama-kāla (the Jaina version of Hic Kali-yuga in
w live) liad not yet arrived. Nor arc die Jainas ever known to fccd non-vcgclarian food cven to their non-Jaina gucsis. Thic bclier that Kļşņa, the Great Jaina Horo, and himsell, a cousin of the Jina, could have succumbed to such a totally unwliolesome and unacceptable practice can only be explained in one way. The relish of the forbidden food and the memories of mcat cating were so ingrained on his soul that they surfaced unexpectedly--riggered no doubt by the impending wedding feast-and drove him to commit that reprehensible act on account of which he was, at the end of his glorious life as a Nārāyana, reborn in the fourth hell. The Jaina epics tell us Urat Kļşa's soul is still languishing in that purgatory, but thcy also promise us Ural lic will emerge from that hell to be reborn again as a human beingand one who remains a vegetarian to be surel-becoming even a Jina himself duus will finally attain illc goal of mokşa.26
A person who does not clinib higlier is in no danger of falling lower. But there is no telling how far and low an apostate, having slipped from the high
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