Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 141

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Gangā, etc., freely, like customs officers samples.188 Going to Kșudrahimavat, they took the best perfumes of mustard flowers and also all the medicinal herbs, as if they were deposits. From the lake named Padmā on it, they took water and lotuses, white, fragrant, pure. Likewise they took lotuses, etc., on the other mountain-ranges, eager in this one task, as if rivaling each other. In every zone and also in the Vaitādhya provinces, they took water, lotuses, etc., insatiable for them like the Master's favor. They took various objects, purifying and fragrant, from the Vakşāraka Mountains, as if they were their wealth piled up. Energetic, they filled the water-pots with water from the Devakurus and Uttarakurus as they filled themselves with joy. In Bhadraśāla, Nandana, Saumanasa, and Pāndaka they took' everything, the best gośirşasandal, etc. After mixing together the fragrant substances and water, they went quickly to Mt. Meru.
Surrounded on all sides by ten thousand Sāmānikas, by the fourfold body-guards, by the Trāyastriñśas, the three assemblies, the four Lokapālas, the seven great armies and the seven generals, the Indra of Araña and Acyuta, pure, began to bathe the Blessed One. After putting on his upper garment, possessing unselfish devotion, Acyuta took a double handful of flowers of the blooming coral-tree, etc. After perfuming it with fragrant dense smoke from incense, he threw the double handful of flowers before the Lord of the Three Worlds. The gods brought the pitchers of perfumed water adorned with wreaths as if smiling from joy produced by the Master's nearness. With buzzing bees on the lotuses in their mouths they looked as if they were reciting the first prayer of the Master's bath. The pitchers looked like Pātāla-water-pots that had come from Pātāla for the sake
168 485. Apparently, a reference to the alleged practice of some octroi-officials of taking small quantities of grain, etc., from the farmers taking in produce.