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CHAPTER ONE
were left. Knowing that their words were infallible, the king of men and the king of Vidyadharas said with great repentance and indifference to worldly objects: “We, careless, as if we had been asleep always, as if we had drunk wine all the time, as if we had been children forever, as if we had been in a perpetual swoon, as if we had always been epileptics, alas! alas! have wasted this birth which is fruitless like a jasmine in a forest."
The two flying munis enlightened them: "Enough of despondency. Surely mendicancy is suitable for you. Mendicancy taken even at the end is the cause of a multitude of good things. Verily, moon-light is a cause of joy to the night-blooming lotus even at the end of the night.”
Enlightened by them in this way, Srivijaya and Amitatejas went to their own homes, eager for pious duties. In the temples they made a final eight-day festival and gave to the poor people, the people without a protector, et cetera, whatever they wanted. The kings installed their sons in their kingdoms and then took the vow under Abhinandana and Jagannandana. They observed the fast called 'pădapopagama' 200 and at that time Śrīvijaya recalled his father.291 Thinking about his extreme good fortune and his own inferior fortune, he made a nidāna: “May I be like him.”
Fifth incarnation as a god (491-493) Śrīvijaya and Amitatejas, one having made a nidana and one not, died and became gods in the heaven Prāṇata. Named Manicüla and Divyacūla, they remained happily in the palaces Susthitāvarta and Nanditāvartaka. As gods immersed in an ocean of pleasure, they passed lives of twenty sāgaropamas, absorbed in happiness, accomplishing the attainment of desires by (mere) thought.
290 489. See I, n. 126. 201 489. His father was Triprstha, the first Vasudeva.
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