Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 4

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

Page 382

RĀMA'S EMANCIPATION
347 Rāma's life as a monk (175–226). Then Räma performed the funeral rites of his younger brother. Wishing to take initiation, he instructed Satrughna to take the kingdom. Satrughna, averse to existence, refused the kingdom, saying, “I shall follow you, honored sir." Then Rāghava, eager himself for the fourth object of existence, gave the kingdom to Anangadeva, the son of Lavaņa. He went to the presence of the muni, Suvrata, belonging to the line of Munisuvrata, indicated by the layman Arhaddāsa. There Rāma took the vow with Satrughna, Sugriva, Bibhişaņa, Virādhita 208 and other kings. When Rāmabhadra had gone forth (to life as a monk), sixteen thousand kings went forth from disgust with existence. Thirty-seven thousand beautiful women became mendicants and they joined the retinue of the nun Srimati. The sage Rāma, imbued with knowledge of the Purvas and Angas, practiced penance for sixty years at the guru's feet, persevering in various vows.
Then Rāma, whose vihāra was secret with his guru's permission, went alone, fearless, to a mountain-cave in a forest. At the same dawn, as he was engaged in meditation, Muni Rämabhadra's clairvoyance arose. Seeing the whole universe, fourteen rajjus in extent, as if it were in his hand, he knew that his younger brother had been killed by two gods and gone to hell. The worshipful Rāma reflected: "I was Dhanadatta in a former birth. Lakşmaņa was my younger brother, named Vasudatta. In that birth also he died with his duties uncompleted in the same way. In this birth Vasudatta's soul became Laksmana, my younger brother. In this birth a hundred years passed uselessly while he was a prince; three hundred while he was governor of a province and forty in the expeditions of conquest; eleven thousand, five hundred and sixty while he was king: So his total life of twelve thousand years passed gradually, productive
308 179. I.e., Virādha.