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104. THE STORY OF DHANDHA
In a certain village, a farmer belonging to the Pārāśara community was an expert in agriculture. Therefore he was called Kṛṣi-Pärāsara. He also justified the name by the leanness of his body (krs'a means lean). He cultivated a patch of land that belonged to the Royal Family but he over-worked the bullocks even during the heat of the day and even when it was time for them to rest and eat. He would not easily release them, before making them pull the plough over at least one more row. It is true that he extracted very hard work from his team of bullocks but earned a good deal of money for himself. He also accumulated, during his life time, a lot of antarǎya type of karma.
After his death, he had to go through various types of lives, before he was born as Dhandha, the son of Vasudeva. This was due to some good deeds that he had to his credit. As Dhandha he renounced his worldly life at the behest of Aristanemi. It is now as a wandering monk that he came to experience the antaraya karma of his earlier existence. As a monk begging in Dvārakā, he did not ever get enough food and even his companion received hardly substantial alms. He asked his master why it should always be like this and the master told him of his past life. He now took a vow that he would never be a recipient of any benefit which would accrue to him through the merit of others.
Once Vasudeva asked the tirthankara which one of the eighteen thousand monks that he was training had done the hardest penance. The tirthankara replied that it could easily be the monk Dhandhaka who had made the hardest vow of not benefitting
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