Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 4

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

Page 381

346
CHAPTER TEN emancipation, approached Muni Ativega and took initiation, their faces averted from the state of householders.
Then the god Jațāyus in order to enlighten Rāghava stood before him and sprinkled a dry tree with water repeatedly. He threw dry dung on a rock and planted a bed of lotuses; he sowed seed at the wrong time with a dead ox and a plow. He threw sand on a machine and pressed it for oil. He showed Rāma other useless things like these. Rāma said to him : "Sir, why do you water a dry tree uselessly? Does a pestle grow just anywhere, to say nothing of fruit? Why do you plant a bed of lotuses on a rock, foolish man, or sow seeds in a desert with dead oxen? There would not be oil from sand. Why do you press it, stupid ? In all cases your efforts are wasted as you do not use proper means.”
Jațāyus smiled and said: “If you know this, sir, why do you carry a corpse on your shoulder, a sign of ignorance?" Rama embraced Saumitri's body and replied: "Why do you say an unlucky thing?' Get out of my sight."
While Rāma was saying this to Jațāyus, the god Kștāntavadana, knowing it by clairvoyance, came to enlighten him. Putting a woman's corpse on his shoulder, he went near Råma. Rāma said to him, "Are you crazy, carrying a woman's corpse so?” Kệtānta replied: "Why do you say an unlucky thing? She is my wife. But why do you yourself carry a corpse? If you know that my wife, whom I am carrying, is dead, are you not intelligent enough to know that there is a corpse on your own shoulder ?”.
Understanding being restored by various reasons pointed out by him in this way, Rāma thought, "Is it true that my younger brother does not live?” Then the two gods, Jațāyus and Kệtānta, announced themselves to Råma, who had received enlightenment, and went to their own abode.