Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 2

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

Page 115

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howling wolves living very cruelly on deer, echoing with varieties of cries of tiger-families, with screams of crows flying from trees split by huge elephants, with rocks and ground burst open by blows from a multitude of lions' tails, with paths filled with bones of large elephants crushed by sarabhas, echoing with the sounds from the bows of Sabaras engaged in hunting, with Bhilla-boys occupied in seizing bears' ears, and with fires starting from tree-tops rubbing together.
CHAPTER THREE
The Lord, naturally resolute, practiced kayotsarga with ease, sometimes, motionless as another peak on a mountain-top, resembling a conquered person gazing at the ground only; sometimes on the bank of a great river like a tree with joints broken by troops of leaping monkeys; sometimes in a cemetery filled with formidable Vetālas, Pisacas, and ghosts at play, with pollen of flowers blown about by the wind; and in other places more terrifying than the Raudras.175 Sometimes the Blessed One, Lord Ajita, observed a one day's fast, sometimes a two days' fast, or three or four days' fast; at one time a fast of five days, at other times fasts of six, seven, or eight days; sometimes a fast of one month, of two, three, four, five, six, seven, up to eight months, while he was wandering in the Aryan countries, his powers undiminished.
Even in the hot season when the heat of the sun was burning his forehead, indifferent to the body, he did not desire even the shade of a tree. In the winter season when the trees were filled with a load of falling snow, the Lord did not desire a fire, like a person with burning bile. The Lord was not disturbed by the torrents, made powerful by strong winds, from the clouds, like a river-ranging elephant.176 He endured also other trials hard to endure, enduring all like the earth, a tilaka (himself) on the earth.
175 319. A class of evil spirits. 176 326.
Cf. ML 1. 29 and Edgerton, 4n, 49-50.