Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

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I would be his son, also, if I became like you.” After destroying the mud of depression by the waters of repentance, he established his son, Somayaśas, in the kingdom. That was the beginning of the Soma-line filled with a hundred branches, the only source of various men-jewels. Then bowing to Bāhubali, Bharata and his retinue went to the city Ayodhyā which was like a sister of the Sri of sovereignty.
The blessed muni, Bāhubali, remained there alone, as if sprung up from the earth, as if fallen from the sky. Devoted to meditation, his eyes fixed on the end of his nose, motionless, the muni appeared like a signpost. Like a forest-tree his body endured the wind in the hot season spreading hot grains of sand like grains of fire. Plunged in the nectar of good meditation, he was unconscious of the sun in the middle of the hot season, like a fire-pit, over his head. Covered from head to foot with mud made from dust and perspiration caused by the heat, he looked like a boar that had come out of mud. In the rainy season he was no more disturbed by streams of water than a mountain by trees shaken by wind and rain. He was not shaken from kāyotsarga nor from meditation by the flashes of lightning nor by the mountain-peaks shaken by thunder-storms. Both of his feet were covered with moss caused by dripping water, like the steps of a deserted village-tank. In the winter season in which elephant-deep streams were frozen, he remained comfortable from the fire of meditation active in burning the fuel of karma. On winter nights when trees were frozen by cold, Bāhubali's pious meditation bloomed especially, like jasmines. 867
Forest-buffaloes scratched themselves on him just as on the trunk of a huge tree, at the same time splitting their horns. Families of rhinoceroses experienced the delight of sleep at night resting with their bodies on his body,
867 766. In India the jasmine blooms during the winter.