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32. THE STORY OF SAKATA
It happened in the city of Sábhañjani. On one of the main streets, Mahāvira's disciple Gautama saw a young man with his hands tied behind him and the neck also stretched as far back as it could go, with his ears and nose cut off and he was being proclaimed as a criminal sentenced to death. He was being accompanied by an attractive looking young woman. Gautama felt greatly affected by the miserable sight and spoke about it to his master who said that it was all the fruit of their bad karma in their previous existence.
This young man Sakata had lived then in the Chagalapura as a shepherd. His father Chania was a rich shepherd who had a very large number of cattle, goats, hogs, deer, lions, peacocks and several such animals whose flesh tasted delicious. He had kept a number of servants on his farm to look after his enormous lot of animals. Every day they killed many of them, cut their flesh with knives and under the supervision of their master, fried, roasted or baked the flesh of the animals so slaughtered. They sold the meat and earned their livelihood. The shepherd Chania enjoyed eating the well cooked meat of the animals from his farm, along with wines. He paid his servants partly in cash and partly in food. This way he collected a great deal of sinful karma through his sinful acts and after his death was born as a hell-being in the fourth region of hell where he was condemned to live for ten sagoropamas.
In the same city was a merchant Subhadra by name, whose wife Bhadrā gave birth to only still-born children. Around the time when the shepherd Chania's time in hell was over, Bhadrā found herself pregnant once again. Chania had come into her womb. The
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