Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 2

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

Page 271

246
CHAPTER ONE
breaking his fast. He (Surendradatta) arose, bowed to the Lord of the World with devotion, took up a rice-pudding and said, “ Please take it." The Lord accepted the ricepudding free from faults, acceptable, free from life, in his hand-vessel, the only vessel for everything.880 The Lord, his mind not greedy for delicacies broke his fast just sufficiently to maintain life, the cause of good fortune to the giver. Then there was the sound of a drum, like the trumpeting of a sky-elephant; a divine stream of treasure fell from the sky, like a broken necklace; a rain of flowers fell from the sky, like the wealth of Nandana; there was a shower of fragrant rain, resembling the ichor of a skyelephant. The gods waved their garments as if they were held by one cord, and a voice said, “Oh, the gift! Oh, the gift! The good gift!” Surendradatta made immediately a platform of gold and gems at the place where the Lord had broken his fast, and worshipped the platform at dawn, noon, and sunset as if it were the Lord's feet. He took no food at all until he had made the pūjā.
His kevala (311-318) After leaving that place the Blessed One wandered as a mendicant for fourteen years in ever different villages, villages approached both by land and water, cities, mines, poor towns, towns with earthen walls, isolated towns, towns approached either by land or water, and forests, having no abode, restrained by manifold vows, enduring undepressed the twenty-two trials, having the three controls, five kinds of carefulness, silent, fearless, resolute, his gaze fixed on one point.
Then the Lord stood in pratimā, engaged in the second pure meditation, under a śäl tree in Sahasrāmravaņa. While he was engaged in meditation, the four destructive karmas of Sambhava Svāmin crumbled like dry leaves of
890 304. It is to be noted that here in a Svetāmbara work-the hand is used instead of an alms-bowl. Cf. AJP, XLVII, p. 76.