Treasury of Jain Tales

Author(s): V M Kulkarni
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

Page 84

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viciousness." He asked him why and how his enmity with the Yaksa had begun. It was said to be from a former birth. This story is told as follows :
"In a city called Kāñcanapura there ruled Vikramayasas. He had a large harem of 500 young and beautiful ladies and yet he felt infatuated by a charming looking young woman called Visnusr. He thought she surpassed in her beauty even the fair women of the gods by virtue of her bloom of youth and grace. She was the wife of Nagadatta, a great merchant of Kāñcanapura. The king abducted her and carried her into his harem. Her husband knew nothing of this. He only lamented the loss of his wife so much that eventually he became mad. The children on the street made fun of him but he was worried only about his wife. The king in the meantime got so much absorbed in Visnusr that he neglected his own duties and paid no attention to the reproaches of the people nor of his own minister. Even the ladies of his seraglio bitterly complained that he completely neglected them and spent all his time in pleasures of life with his newly found woman. One day these women, full of contempt and jealousy, worked out some deadly magic on Visnusri and killed her. Thereupon the king became mad just like Nägadatta; he would not allow the body of Visnusri to be removed from his chamber for the funeral. The ministers who had felt anxious for the king decided to play a trick upon the king. They stole the body from the palace and dumped it in an adjoining forest. The king who missed the body of his beloved remained for three days without food or drink. The ministers, who were afraid that the king might die, led him into the forest to show the body but when the king saw it trickling with a mass of pus, swarming with hosts of wriggling, wiggling, worms, its eyes torn out by the crows, the flesh hacked to pieces by the fierce beaks of birds emitting an ill-smelling odour, his mind was overpowered by fear, disgust and shame and he began to blame himself:
"How ! In that body for whose sake, O miserable soul, thou hast given up family, good character, noble birth, fame and shame, such a condition has set in." Thereupon the king gave up his throne, his kingdom, his harem