________________
178
CHAPTER THREE of separation as long as I live is unbearable to me living. If you see my wife, tell her this, 'Your husband has entered the fire because of separation from you.''
After this speech, Pavana flew up in the air to jump into the blazing fire on the funeral-pyre. After hearing that speech, Prahlada quickly took him by the arms and pressed him eagerly to his breast. "What is this obstacle to my death, the remedy for the pain of separation from my wife?” Pavanañjaya said. Prahlāda said tearfully : “I, your father, am the criminal, who allowed the banishment of an innocent daughter-in-law. That one thing was done in the first place by your mother without thinking. Do not do a second. Be firm. You are intelligent. Vidyadharas have been sent by me by the thousands to search for the daughter-in-law, son. Wait their arrival."
At that time some of the Vidyadharas that he had sent went to Hanupura, looking for Pavana and Añjanā. They described to Pratisürya and Añjanā Pavana's determination to enter the fire from grief at separation from Añjanã. Añjana heard that speech painful to hear and, crying, “Oh! I am killed," fell to the ground in a faint, as if she had drunk poison. Sprinkled with sandal and water, fanned with palm-leaf fans, she became conscious, got up, and cried in a pathetic voice:
“Faithful wives enter the fire from grief over a husband, for life is a source of pain to them without a husband. But to wealthy husbands who enjoy thousands of women, grief for a wife is only temporary, so why enter the fire ? This has become reversed in the case of you entering the fire, while I, alas 1 live even in separation for so long a time. Now this difference between you, very noble, and me, little noble, is noticeable, like that between a sapphire and a piece of glass. This is no fault of my parents-in-law, no fault of my father. Such a fault is because of the karma of unfortunate me, no one else."
Pratisūrya enlightened her crying and put her with her son in his best of cars and went in search of Pavana.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
