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CHAPTER FIVE
time to eat. For the body, accomplishing all things, moves by means of food.”
Thus commanded urgently by his father again and again, Vişņu ate a little sorrowfully, like a rutting elephant. Without taking any sandal even, without putting on other clothes, like an ichneumon on hot ground 105 because of great pain, as soon as he had barely eaten, Janārdana went on foot to his father's house with his whole unhappy retinue from his own house.
His mother's sati (111-127) As he was entering there, Vişņu was informed compassionately by his mother's female door-keeper, who appeared before him in tears: “O prince, help! help! Even while the king is living, the queen contemplates a terrible thing.” When he heard that, Vişņu, agitated, went to his mother's house and saw his mother as she was saying:
"All the great heaps of jewels that originated in my husband's favor, all the endless gold, all the piles of silver, all the thousands of collections of ornaments-pearls, diamonds, genuine jewels, and miscellaneous, and whatever other treasure there may be, present all that to the seven fields.196 For that is the first viaticum of those set out on the long journey. I cannot endure at all to be a widow at my husband's death. I shall go before him. So let the fire be prepared quickly."
Hari approached his mother, the mother of a wealth of sorrow, as she was saying this, bowed, and said with sobs, “Mother, mother, why do you also abandon me unfortunate? Alas! fate is hostile to me since the queen does this.”
106 109. Cf. I, 327 and n. 368.
196 116. The seven fields' are Jain shrines, statues, scriptures, monks, nụns, laymen, laywomen. PH, s.v. sattakhitti; Rājendra, S.V. sattakhetti.
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