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with great pomp. As monks they studied all their religious literature, observed many fasts and other prescribed disciplines. One of these days they said that whenever any fast or penance was to be undertaken, it should be undertaken by all of them together which they did. Mahabala, though he agreed to the arrangement suggested by his friends, secretly desired to do one better; if they decided to fast until the fourth meal, Mahabala would go on until the sixth meal and if it was going to be a fast until the eighth meal, Mahabala would observe it until the tenth meal. Because of this trickery that he practised on his friends, his karman led to his being re-born as a woman though his severe penance deserved the reward of a tirthankara.
All seven of them practised severe penances as a result of which they were reduced to mere skeletons. Finally on mount Căru their souls left their bodies when they were lost in meditation and they were reborn as gods in the Jayantavimana. After completing their prescribed span of life there, they were all reborn with the exception of Mahābala, as princes in six royal families: one was born as Pratibuddhi in the Iksvāku family, the second as Candracchaya of the Arga country, the third as Sarikha of Kāsi, the fourth as Rukmin of Kunala, the fifth as Adinasatru of the Kurus and the sixth as Jitasatru of the Pancala country.
As for Mahabala, he was endowed in heaven with three kinds of knowledge and granted a full term of thirty two Sāgaropamas in heaven. Then on a night when the auspicious planets were in the ascendancy and the right omens appeared, when the earth was full of plenty, people all over the country were gay and happy, in the first month of summer, at the conjunction of the As vini constellation with the moon at midnight, Mahabala was conceived in the womb of queen Prabhavati of Mithila of which the king was Kumbhaka. That night the queen had seen fourteen great dreams which fact was interpreted by the svapna pathakas as the happiest auguries for the child that would be born.
As a pregnancy desire, the queen felt that she should lie down on a bed of five different kinds of flowers of beautiful colours and fragrances such as Pātala, Mallikā, Campaka, As'oka, Nāga,
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