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394
CHAPTER THREE On the next day the Lord broke his fast in a hamlet, Kopakața, with a milk-pudding in the house of the householder Dhanya. The gods made there the five things, rain of treasure, et cetera.344 But Dhanya made a footstool on the ground of the Master's feet.345 Unhindered like the wind, the Lord wandered in villages, mines, cities, et cetera, an ordinary ascetic, his gaze fixed six feet ahead. One day in his wandering the Master came to a hermitage near a town and the sun set. The Teacher of the World stood in pratimā under a banyan tree near a well, motionless as its foot.
Attacks by Meghamālin (247–295)
Now the Meghakumāra, the Asura Meghamālin, knew by clairvoyance his own crime in a former birth. Recalling his hostility to Pārśva in each birth, the Asura blazed inside with anger like an ocean with submarine fire. Meghamālin, the basest of gods, blind from anger, approached to attack Pārsvanātha, like an elephant to split a mountain.
The god created tigers, their mouths terrifying from saw-like teeth, with claws the shape of hooks, tawny-eyed. They beat the top of the ground with their tails again and again and gave loud roars resembling the words of a charm of Death. The Blessed One was not shaken by them, his eyes motionless in meditation; they went away somewhere as if from fear of the fire of his meditation.
Elephants, created by him, attacked, trumpeting, dripping with mada, their trunks lifted, lofty like living mountains. The Master was not disturbed by them terrifying even to the terrifying. They fled quickly and went somewhere, as if ashamed. Bears, filling the heavens with their growls, devoid of pity; many panthers, cruel, like an army of Yama; scorpions, splitting rocks even with the tip of the sting; serpents, burning trees by their glance, were created there by him with the
344 243. See I, p. 180 f. 345 243. I.e., he made a platform where Pārsva had stood. Cf. I, p. 183.
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