Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

Page 276

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village the eager village-elders like relatives by accepting some gifts and not accepting others; keeping the soldiers, who were streaming forth in all directions, from the villages just like cows from fields by the severe staff of his command; looking at the village-children, who had climbed on trees like monkeys, gazing with delight, as a father looks at his children; seeing the prosperity of the villages evidenced by grain, money, and live-stock which never suffered from calamities, the fruit of the creeper of his own government; turning the rivers into mud and drying up the pools, making the tanks and wells like openings of Pātāla ; proceeding very slowly with pleasure to the people like the wind from Malaya, the King, punisher of disrespectful enemies, arrived at Vinītā.
Not far away from Vinitā, the King placed his camp like Vinītā's brother that had become a guest. Concentrating his mind on the capital, the crest-jewel of kings made a four days' fast which provides certain freedom from calamity. Leaving the pausadha-house at the end of the four days' fast, together with the kings the King broke his fast with a divine meal. Arches were set up in Ayodhyā at every step, like tall play-swings of Sris who had come from foreign countries. The citizens sprinkled every road with saffron-water, like the gods with perfumed water at the Jina's birth. The townspeople erected platforms with golden pillars like the treasures multiplied and come forward. The platforms shone on both sides of the road facing each other, like the Svarna mountains around the five lakes in the Kurus. On each platform were festoons-receptacles of jewels, surpassing the beauty of a row of rainbows. With musical instruments, lutes, drums, etc., singers stood on the platforms like troops of Gandharvas in the heavenly palaces. Pearl-wreaths, hanging from the platform-canopies as if on dwellinghouses of Śrī, made the sky blossom with their beauty. The people made the bazaar splendid with chauris like the laughter of the city-goddess delighted, with pictures