Book Title: Sthaviravali
Author(s): Ratnaprabhvijay
Publisher: Jain Granth Prakashak Sabha

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Page 217
________________ 196 was the head of the Jainá Sangha for eleven years. He died at an age of eighty-five, i-e seventy-five years after the Nirvāņa of Sramana Bhagavāna Mahāvîra. Prabhava Swāmi belonged to treat o Kātyāyana gotra. One night, when the whole congregation of ascetic disciples was sleeping, an idea of undermentioned nature occurred at midnight in the mind of Prabhava Swami who was then in otofaan Yoga Nidrá, Somnolent condition induced by the practice of Yoga: “Who will be my successor as the bead of the Congregation, capable of rescuing the Jaina Sangha like a clever mariner and of expanding, like the Sun, the lotus-like Dharma preached by the Arhats? When, deeply engrossed in this thought, with the object of finding out a suitable successor, Prabbava Swami thought over the sadhus of his own congregation and the entire Jaina Sangha and looking out with the aid of his bighly illuminat. ing superior knowledge, he could not find out a single individual radiant with the zeal of spreading the Dharma preached by the Tirthankaras. He therefore turned his attention towards people of other doctrines, as a lotus deserves to be picked up even from mire, and he found out a well-known Brahmin Pandit (scholar) named Fuha ng Sayyambhava-bhatta of Vatsa gotra, as a most suitable individual whose Liberation was also in near future. Pandit Sayyambhava was at that time busy performing various uns, Yajnas, Sacrifices at Raja-griha. Prabhava Swami thereupon went to Rāja-griha, and sent two of his Sādhūs to the far Yajna śālā, sacrificial hall, with instructions to request for food, and, as the Brāhmins will not give them food at that time, to leave the hall uttering the following verse:

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