Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 3

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 345

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CHAPTER FIVE
adorned by the eighteen guilds and sub-guilds. He was protector of seventy-two thousand large cities and ruler of ninety-nine thousand towns accessible both by land and sea. He was supreme lord of forty-eight thousand towns approached by land only of water only, and of twentyfour thousand poor towns as well as isolated towns. He was lord of twenty thousand mines of jewels, et cetera, and ruler of sixteen thousand towns with earthen walls. The lord was protector of fourteen thousand granaries and fifty-six island settlements. He was chief of forty-nine poor kingdoms and he enjoyed the rest of six-part Bhārata also. Amusing himself with singing, dances by girls, dances by men, dramatic modes of conveying pleasures, 866 gathering flowers, water-sports, et cetera, he spent twentyfive thousand years less eight hundred years from the time he became cakravartin.
Founding the congregation (267–273) At that time the thrones of the Lokāntika-gods in Brahmaloka shook, as if swung by someone. The gods, Sārasvatas, et cetera, bewildered, thinking "What is this?” employed clairvoyant knowledge and, understanding completely, said to each other: "Listen! The time has come for the initiation of Arhat Sänti in the southern half of Bhārata in Jambūdvipa. The thrones, with consciousness produced, as it were, by his power, announce to us the action suitable at the time of initiation. Even if the Blessed One himself knows by the three kinds of knowledge, nevertheless it is customary that we remind him that it is time for the yow."
After talking with each other to this effect and getting in their aerial cars, the Sārasvatas, et cetera, approached Santinātha. After circumambulating Sāntinātha three times and bowing to him, their hands folded submissively, they said, "Master, found a congregation.” After saying
366 265. Abhinaya. See I, n. 235.