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TENTH INCARNATION AS MEGHARATHA
297
Wait for me, Lord, until I have established the heir on the throne and come here to take initiation."
"There must be no negligence.". So instructed by the Arhat himself, Megharatha went home and said to his younger brother, "Take the burden of the earth, son, that
may become a mendicant. I am wearied from this wandering in existence, like a traveler." Then Drdharatha said, his hands folded submissively: "Truly this samsāra, which is painful, must be abandoned by the discerning. But why do you desert me, lord, in this samsara being such, hard to cross like a boundless ocean, by imposing the burden of the earth on me? Until today you have considered me like yourself. Why do you make a distinction now? Be gracious, lord. Save me also, as well as yourself. Today I shall become a mendicant with you at our father's feet. Give the earth to someone else, master."
Then Megharatha gave the kingdom to his own son, Meghasena, and the rank of heir-apparent to Rathasena, Drdharatha's son. When the departure-festival had been held by Meghasena, King Megharatha went to the Blessed One with Drdharatha, seven hundred of his sons, and four thousand kings, and undertook abstention from all censurable activities. Enduring trials and attacks very hard to endure, having the three controls, the five kinds of carefulness, free from desire even in the body, engaged in manifold vows and penance, accompanied by Drdharatha, knowing eleven Angas, he wandered over the earth.
By means of the twenty pure sthānakas, devotion to the Arhat, et cetera, he acquired the name- and familykarma of an Arhat, hard to acquire.
After he had practiced the severe penance called sinhaniḥkrīḍita846 and had preserved his asceticism unbroken for a lac of purvas, the noble muni Megharatha, firm as a mountain, ascended Mt. Amaratilaka and observed a fast according to rules.
346 356. See II, n. 51.
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