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fair-bodied women, resting on the bank, looked like watergoddesses. The eyes of the fair-browed ones became red from blows by masses of water as if in competition with lotuses that had become rivals. The water became fragrant with the musk-ointment of the gazelle-eyed women, like the water of a forest-stream from the ichor of rutting elephants. So Prince Vajrayudha, his mind completely intent on water-sports, was not a fit subject for fear on the part of his enemies.
CHAPTER THREE
The soul of Damitāri, his enemy in a former birth, attained the rank of a god, after wandering through births for a long time, and came there at that time, named Vidyuddanṣṭra. When Vidyuddanṣṭra saw Vajrayudha, grinding his teeth, reflecting angrily, "Oh! where will he go alive?" he lifted up a mountain and threw it over the tank to crush the prince and his retinue like a handful of chick-peas. The rogue of an Asura bound Vajrayudha below by his feet, like an elephant-keeper an elephant, with magic nooses resembling the noose of Varuna.818 Vajrayudha shattered the mountain with his fist, like Vajrin with a thunderbolt, and broke the nooses like a web of lotus-stalks. Then the prince and his ladies left the tank, his body uninjured, long-armed, like Seṣāhi leaving Pātāla.
Then Sakra, going on a pilgrimage to Nandiśvara, after bowing to the Jinas arising in Videha, saw him leaving the tank. Thinking, "In this birth he is a cakrin; in a future birth he will be an Arhat," Purandara worshipped him. For reverence is due a future (Arhat) as well as a past one. "You are fortunate. You will be the sixteenth Tirthakṛt, Santi, in Bharatakṣetra in Jambudvipa," Hari said and went away. After Vajrayudha had engaged in numerous sports as he liked, he went to his city with the women of his household and his attendants.
318 68. The noose with which he seizes transgressors.
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