Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

Page 84

the Jinas, and here, going from there to other tirthas, I have fallen. Here, I think, my wife also is falling, Here is Svayamprabhā, alone, poor, pitiable. I think she is here. Remembering her former birth she painted that. For certainly one person does not know what has been experienced by another.” Paņditā agreed, and went to Śrimati and told her everything-a remedy for healing the arrow-wound in her heart.
At the recital of the news of her lover, Srimati's hair stood on end from delight, like Vidura's ground sprouting with jewels at the sound of clouds.88 Śrimati had Paņạitā tell her father, for dependence is a natural virtue of high-born women. Delighted at once by that recital like a pea-cock by thunder, King Vajrasena summoned Vajrajangha. The King said to the Prince, “Take now my daughter Śrimati for your wife as in a former birth." The Prince agreed, and the King, delighted, married Srimati to him, just as the ocean married Śri to Hari.80 Clothed in white linen, like the moon and moonlight united, they had the King's permission to go to Lohārgalapura. Knowing that Vajrajangha was a suitable person, King Svarṇajangha installed him in power and took initiation. Vajrasena also bestowed his sovereignty on his son Puşkalapāla and became a mendicant. He became a Tirthakara. Vajrajangha, dallying with beautiful Srimati, bore with ease the burden of the kingdom, as an elephant bears a lotus. To them who were never separated like the Gangā and the ocean, enjoying pleasures, a son was born.
Then the border vassals on all sides, very angry
88 683. A literary convention. Cf. Kālidāsa's Kumārasambhava 1. 24.
89 687. An allusion to the epic and Purāņic story of “The Churning of the Ocean,' during which Śri was churned up and taken by Vişņu as his wife. Vişnupurāņa, Bk. I, Chap. 9.