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CHAPTER EIGHT
pūrvas, seventy-two hundred who had clairvoyant knowledge, seventy-five hundred who had mind-reading knowledge, seven thousand omniscient, twelve thousand with the art of transformation, fifty-eight hundred disputants, two hundred and eighty-nine thousand laymen, and four hundred and fifty-eight thousand laywomen formed the Lord's retinue as he wandered.
His mokşa (121-127) When the time for emancipation had arrived, the Lord went to Mt. Sammeta and together with a thousand saints began a fast. At the end of a month, on the second day of the black half of Vaiśākha, the moon being in-Pūrvāşādbā, the Master and the saints reached emancipation. Twentyfive thousand pūrvas as prince, fifty thousand as director of the earth, twenty-five thousand in practicing mendicancy; so the total age of Lord Sitala was a hundred thousand pūrvas. Nine crores of sāgaropamas elapsed between the nirvāņa of Suvidhi Svāmin and that of Śītala Svāmin. The lords of the gods (the Indras) celebrated fittingly a magnificent festival of the emancipation of Sri Śītala who had attained emancipation with the munis; and went again to their respective worlds.
Emancipation will surely result to the one meditating on these biographies of eight Tīrthankaras beginning with Sri Sambhava in this third excellent volume with eight chapters, like pure syllables on an eight-petaled lotus 481 to be meditated upon.
481 127. See I, n. 409 ; Yog. 8. I ff. The lotus is used as an aid to concentration in meditation. It may be visualized with the number of petals desired, and on each petal is imagined an object to be meditated upon.
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