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TENTH INCARNATION AS MEGHARATHA
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become mendicants, their karma destroyed, they will attain an imperishable abode."
When they had heard this, the Vidyadharas appeared, considering themselves sons as before, bowed to Ghanaratha, and went home.
When the two cocks had heard this, they reflected, "Alas! this worldly existence, being such, is worthless, the cause of pain. What did we as merchants acquire in a human birth, by which it would happen again, to say nothing of anything else? For human birth is hard to acquire. At that time people were deceived daily by us by various means like hunters greedy for a mouthful, alas! alas! After we had deceived people for a long time by false measures, weights, et cetera, not satisfied, we quarreled with each other. Reaching painful meditation, we died fighting each other; and we got the result of that in many animal-births."
After these reflections, they bowed to the king and said in their own language, "Majesty, tell us. What now shall we do for the benefit of our souls?"
Knowing by clairvoyant knowledge, King Ghanaratha said, "Let Arhat, god, teacher, sädhu, religion, compassion for living things be yours." The cocks agreed to what Ghanaratha said, fasted, and both died. After death they became powerful chiefs of the Bhutas, named Tamracula and Svarṇacula, in the forest Bhūtaratna. Knowing their former birth from clairvoyant knowledge, they created an aerial car and went to Megharatha, their benefactor in a former birth. They bowed to Megharatha with devotion and said:
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We have become lords of the Vyantaras now by your favor. We became mortals, elephants, buffaloes, rams, and after that cocks, with a maximum life in these, by our own acts. In our life as cocks, we ate countless worms daily. What fate would we have attained, if you had not been a refuge, lord? Be gracious. Favor us. Get into
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