Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

Page 304

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disappeared, so that we, indifferent, would go to the Cakrin now? Hunting for a pretext like a bhūt, what mistake of ours can he find, since we have always and everywhere been careful and not grasping? How, pray, can the Lord of Bharata be our master, since we did not receive anything, this kingdom, etc., from him? Rşabha alone is my master and his. How is the relationship of master and servant possible between us? If I went there for the sake of splendor, what sort of splendor would he have ? When the sun rises, fire is not brilliant.
Let those feeble kings serve him, regarding him as master, toward whom-cowards that they are--he is capable of favor and disfavor. If I performed service to him from the standpoint of brotherly affection, the people would talk scurrilously about it in reference to his being Cakravartin. 'I am fearless, because he is my brother.' Let the giver of commands command, if he is able. Enough of brotherly affection. Diamond is not cut with diamond. Let him be content with the attendance of gods, demons, and men. What have I to do with him? A chariot suitable for the road only, even though armored, is broken on a post. If Mahendra, devoted to our father, made the father's eldest son share his throne, why is he arrogant about that? There may be others who with their armies are like a handful of meal in the ocean, compared with him; but I, mark you, would be a submarine fire hard to endure from its heat. Infantry, cavalry, chariots, elephants, general, and Bharata, too-all of them-shall be absorbed in me, like lights in the light of the sun. The man, whom I tossed up in the air as easily as a clod when I was a child, taking him by the feet, as an elephant would take him with its trunk, and whom I caught like a flower, when he had gone very far in the air and was falling to the ground, with the idea, 'He must not be killed,' has forgotten that because of the flatteries of flattering defeated kings, and now has attained another