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CHAPTER THREE
There lived the head of the Brāhmans, named Dāmodara, and his wife Somā. They had a son Suddhabhatta who married Sulakşaņā, the daughter of Siddhabhatta. Sulakşaņā and Suddhabhatta grew up and enjoyed pleasures suitable to their position, as they liked.
In course of time their parents died, and their fathers' money also disappeared. Sometimes he would lie down at night, hungry in the midst of plenty. Famine is close beside the poor man, even in the midst of plenty. Sometimes he wandered in rags on the highway in the city, like a begging monk in a foreign country. Sometimes he was thirsty for a long time like the cãtaka ;277 sometimes his person was unclean, like a Piśāca. Shamed by his neighbors and by himself for being such, he went to a distant foreign country without telling his wife. After some days his wife heard of his departure to a foreign country from gossip that was like a stroke of lightning. Sulaksaņā grieved for a long time, thinking herself deprived of good fortune by the loss of her parents and fortune, and the departure of her husband.
While she was grieving, the nun Vipulā came, wishing to stop in her house during the rainy season. Sulaksaņā allowed Vipulā to live there and listened daily to her religious teaching. From her teaching her wrong-belief disappeared like the sourness of vinegar from mixture with some sweet substance. Then later she attained faultless right-belief, like the moon brilliance after passing the black fortnight. She learned properly all the true categories of jiva, ajīva, etc.,278 like a doctor ailments that arise in the body. She grasped the Jain dharma, adequate for crossing samsāra, like a sea-faring merchant a boat suitable for crossing the ocean. In her arose disgust with objects of the senses, subduing of the passions, and disgust with never-ceasing birth and death. Thus she spent the rainy season with listening to the nun, like a
277 868. See I, n. 161. 278 876. See I, App. IV.
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