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Story of Rāma in Jain Literature
Tirthankara - of course all this after a number of births): Sitä-god's visit to hell and her advice to Laksmana and Råvana, and Rāma's liberation.
Råma attains Nirvana 4. HEMACANDRA'S RAMAYANA - A CRITICAL STUDY (1) ITS RELATION WITH THE WORKS OF VIMALA AND RAVISENA
As we have already pointed out in the footnotes to the summary of the contents of Hemacandra's Rāmāyaṇa, it is based on the Pauma-Cariya of Vimala Sūri with some variations here and there. In a few places it shows acquaintance with the PadmaPurāna of Ravisena. Hemacandra divides the narrative of the story of Rāma in ten cantos of unequal length. The shortest is the first canto with 164 verses; and the longest is the second canto with 654 verses. The total number of verses comes to 3718. He employs like Ravişena the Anustubh metre. Like Ravisena he speaks of Suprabhå, the fourth queen of Dasaratha and the mother of Satrughna. As in the Padma-Purăņa he mentions the bending of Vajravarta and Arņavāvarta ( = Sāgarāvarta) by Rāma and Lakşmana respectively. But for these points it is in agreement with the Palima-Carlya in its essential features.
(11) HEMACANDRA'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE RAMA STORY (a) Välin fights with Rāvaņa, overpowers him, puts him under his arm-pit and in that position he circumambulates the earth thus proving his superior strength. This incident is not to be found in the epics of Vimala and Ravişena but that of Vālmiki.
(b) Dasaratha, after his marriage with Kaikeys, does not return to Ayodhya but goes to Rajagrha, conquers the king of Magadha, stays there, gets there his family and lives there for a long time out of Rāvana's fear. It is there that Rama and Laksmana are born. And when he feels himself to be Invincible on account of his powerful heroic sons he goes to Ayodhya with his whole family, and it is at Ayodhya that Bharata and Satrughna are born.
Again, the number of dreams that come to the mothers of Baladeva and Väsudeva differs from that given by Vimala. Aparăjită here sees four dreams as against the three in the Pauima-carlya and Sumitrā sees seven dreams as against the four in the PaumaCarlya.
(c) Dasaratha names "Rāma' Padma as he was 'Padma (=Lakşm) nivasa-padma'.
(d) Rāma, Lakşmana and the army are transformed into women by Ksetradevatā on the occasion of fighting the king Ativirya (Vimala attributes this to a Jain deity
