Sthaviravali

Author(s): Ratnaprabhvijay
Publisher: Jain Granth Prakashak Sabha

Page 47

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Indrabhati was straight-forward and was searching after truth. He was convinced that the explanation given by Sramaņa Bhagavan Mahāvira about the Vēdic verses was the most appropriate one and that the view held by himself was not correct. His vanity disappeared. He acquired an accurate knowledge about the nature of things by the preaching of the Venerable Ascetic. He realised the transitoriness of all the things in the Universe, felt aversion to worldly pleasures, prostrated himself before Sramaņa Bhagavān Mahāvīra and requested him with a faltering voice “ O lord ! I came here with the deliberate intention of testing your knowledge and discussing with you like a dwarf desiring to measure a tall tree. But you have enlightened me so nicely, that I now want to be free from worldly attachments. You will therefore do me the favour of giving me 1 Diksā Initiation into the Order of Monks and deliver me from the trammels of this HATT Samsāra worldly existence.”
Srama na Bhagavān Mabāvīra welcomed the pure-intentioned request of Indrabhūti as he knew that he would be his first TNT Gapadhara, the head of a corporation of ascetics, and initiated Indrabhüti and his five hundred pupils into his Order of Ascetics. Indrabhüri Gautama was fifty years old at the time of renouncing the world, and accepting for Căritra Dharma, the duties of an ascetic.
At that time, as Kubèra, the god of Wealth bronght before Gautama Guņadbara, the materials suitable for an asietic life and requested him to accept them. Before accepting them, the great ascetic Indrabhúti who was now weary of worldly existences, thought "I have r·nounced all my belongings. I do not know whether I should accept these materials or not?” Indrabhuti Gautama whose name is even at present remembered every morning, whose false belief was transformed into right belief by the preaching and Tria Căritradāna Initiation by the Venerable Saint, whose aversion to worldly belongings was increasing and whose spiritual development and