Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 2

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

Page 29

CHAPTER ONE
gave to suitable persons only, as was fitting. For that (giving) bears much fruit in a suitable person, like rainwater in a pearl-oyster.10 Knowing dharma, he guided his subjects on the road of dharma, as if he were making an entrance from all sides into an enemy's city. He perfumed this earth with pure good conduct, like the sandaltree the Malaya-country with fragrance. He became a hero in battle, a hero in compassion, a hero in liberality, by victory over enemies, by comforting the miserable, by gratifying beggars. So engaged in royal duties, having a firm mind, free from negligence, he protected the earth for a long time like a serpent-king guarding nectar. 11
Reflections on samsāra (42-66) One day, as he, who knew what should be done and what should not be done, was meditating on the worth and worthlessness of existence, the inclination toward disgust with existence appeared.
“Samsāra is like a boundless ocean, terrifying from the pain of the fall into the whirl-pool of the lacs of birthnuclei.12 Out upon it! Oh! Oh! in this existence people are deluded by objects seen for a moment, destroyed in a moment like magic, like dream-illusion. Youth is unsteady like the end of a flag stirred by the wind. Life is uncertain like a drop of water resting on the tip of kuśa-grass. Of that life the months spent in the womb resembling a house in hell pass like a palyopama 18 because of excessive pain. When a man is born, how large a part of his life passes in childhood when he is as dependent as if he were stupid and blind! How great a portion of life passes in youth as vainly as if he were intoxicated
10 38. See I, notes 107 and 314. Cf. also, Manwaring, Marathi Proverbs, 1291, and Carr, 2130, p. 367.
11 42. Cf. I, n. 184.
12 44. There are 84 lacs of species of birth-nuclei. Pravac. 968 ff., p. 287 f.
18 47. See I, n. 50.