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FIVE PREVIOUS INCARNATIONS
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recited mantras, et cetera to Śiva. He dug and had dug tanks, wells, and ponds, undeterred by the injury to waterbodied and earth-bodied souls. He took a sickle and axe and, like a ploughman, he himself cut darbha as fuel, having little wit like a child. He made charity-fires 286 and gave lights for the road, unafraid of the sin of burning insects in the wood and of the fall (into the fire) of flying insects, et cetera. At the beginning of a meal he always made a gift of food to evil-souled crows, et cetera, as if they were guests. He worshipped and honored cows like gods-he, like a bull; and also trees, the banyan, the pippal, nīm, et cetera. He sprinkled plants with water containing small creatures and he maintained water-centers here and there. Doing such things as these with the idea that they were dharma, foolish, he spent much time, living by the fruit of labor.
One day, he saw a Vidyādhara going through the air in his aerial car, like a rich man without a superior. He made a nidāna, 'May I be like him in another birth as a result of this penance.' In course of time he died. And then he was born as you, son of the Vidyadhara-king, Indrāśani, by his wife, Asurī, in the city Camaracañcā. This love of yours for Sutårā was from the connection in a former birth. Memory of a former birth lasts for a hundred births."
Sutārā, Amitatejas, Śrīvijaya, and Asani experienced disgust with existence and astonishment from hearing about their former births.
"Am I capable of emancipation or not?” questioned by Amitatejas, Blessed Balabhadra Muni replied: “In the ninth birth from this birth in this country Bharata, served by thirty-two thousand crowned kings, lord of the fourteen
286 409. Dharmaśakati. This word, which does not occur in any of the Sanskrit lexicons, was explained by Muni Jayantavijaya. To light a fire on the ground or on a mud hearth or to make a fire of any kind for people to sit around in winter is considered meritorious by the Hindus. Cf. Guj. śagaời,'hearth.'
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