Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 4

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

Page 372

• RĀMA'S EMANCIPATION
337
the contact of living creatures in food, et cetera in such darkness?'
Enlightened by him with such words, as if sprinkled with nectar on his heart, he became a layman. After death he became a god in Saudharma. After falling, he became the merchant Padmaruci, a very devout layman, the son of Dhărani and Meru, in the city Mahāpura. One day he happened to be riding to the cow-pen when he saw an old bull that had fallen on the road and was dying. Compassionate, he dismounted from his horse, approached him, and spoke the formula of homage to the Five Supreme Ones in his ear. By its power he became after death Vịşabhadhvaja, the son of King Chatracchāya and Sridattā, in the same place.
One day, strolling at random, he went to the spot of the old bull and recovered memory of former existences at the sight of the place of the former birth. He had a shrine built there and on one of its walls he had the dying old bull painted, a man reciting the formula of homage in his ear, and near him his horse with a saddle. He instructed the guards there, 'If any one should look at this picture and understand it completely, I must be informed about him at once.' With these instructions he went to his house.
One day the best of merchants, Padmaruci, went to that shrine to worship. After he had worshipped the Arhat he looked at the picture on the wall and said with astonishment, 'All that agrees with me. Informed by the guards, Vrşabhadhvaja went there and asked the man, 'Do you know the events of the picture?' 'Some time ago I recited the formula of homage to that bull when he was dying. I have been painted here by some one knowing about it,' he said. Bowing to him, Vrşabhadhvaja said: 'I, who was this old bull, have become a king's son by the power of the formula of homage. To what birth would I, having an animal-birth at that time, have gone, if you, compassionate, had not recited to me