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ground, may fall. The story of Kṛṣṇa does not fully spell out what probably the Jaina authors fear actually may happen to a Jaina who has ceased to be a vagetarian. The alleged craving for blood by the muni Vasistha in his new incarnation as the fetus Kamsa must inescapably lead to the horrible conclusion that, for an apostate, cannibalism is just a step away from eating animal flesh. One such story, the subject matter of a long Kannaḍa kāvya called Jinadattarüyacarite, widely known in the Digambara Jaina community of Karnataka, might illustrate this point. The story tells us about the migration of Jainas in ancient times under the leadership of Prince Jinadatta from northern Mathura-the same city once ruled by Kamsa and Kṛṣṇa-to the newly founded Humcă (near the modern city of Shimoggā), the medieval seat of the Santara dynasty of southern Karnataka.27 In brief, the story is that Mathurā was ruled by a devout Jaina king Sākāra and his queen Siyaladevi. They have a son called Jinadatta obtained through the grace of Padmavati, the protector goddess (śāsana-devata) of the Jina Pārsvanatha. Like the king Santanu of the Mahābhārata, king Sākāra once lost his way in a forest and found himself in love with the daughter of a king of hunters (vyādha). He secretly promised her father that he would give his kingdom to her son, and established her separately from his chief queen in the outskirts of the capital where she soon gave birth to a son called Maridatta. For a long while the king remained a vegetarian but with the birth of the new son, he began frequenting her house and in no time became fond of cating meat dishes cooked in her kitchen. One day, we are told, the cook could not find any animal to slaughter and, fearing the king's wrath, procured from the cemetery the flesh of a dead man and prepared a novel dish. The king was extremely pleased with the new dish and was not deterred even when he came to know the source of the meat. Indeed, he even secretly contrived with the cook to obtain freshly killed human meat every day for his table and arranged to send a small child, who would become the victim of the day, to the cook with the ruse of delivering a lemon. Soon small children began disappearing without a trace from the city of Mathurā. The king's addiction to hunan meat had reached a point of no return, enabling the hunter queen to use it to her benefit to get rid of Jinadatta, the rival to her son, by sending him to the cook to deliver the lemon. But fate intervened and Māridatta intercepted him, snatching the lemon away from him, insisting that he would himself deliver it to the cook and was thus killed
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