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CHAPTER IV THE WANDERING AND EMANCIPATION OF
PĀRŚVANATHA
Then the Teacher of the World, wandering for the benefit of all the world, went one day to the country Pundra, which was like a tilaka of the earth.
Story of Sāgaradatta (2-49)
Now there was at that time in the city Tāmalipti in the eastern territory a merchant's son, Sāgaradatta, knowing the arts, young, intelligent. He was always averse to women from the memory of former births which had taken place and he did not wish to marry any woman, even though beautiful. For he, a Brāhman in a former birth, had been abandoned, unconscious, somewhere else by his wife who had given him poison, because she was in love with another man. He had been restored to life by a herd-girl and he became a mendicant. He died and became the merchant's son, with memory of his former birth, averse to women. The herd-girl, devoted to worldly matters, died in course of time and became the beautiful daughter of a merchant in the same city.
She, won with dignity, was chosen for Sāgaradatta by his brothers together with the idea, “ His eyes should take pleasure in her.” Yet his mind did not relax even on her. For he considered women to be messengers of Yama, because of his experience in his former birth. The merchant's daughter thought: “ There is some memory of a former birth. He has been mistreated by some courtesan in a former birth.”
After reflecting thus in her mind, at the right time she herself wrote a śloka on a leaf and sent it. He read: “It is not fitting for a man, who has been burned by a milk-pudding, to abandon curds. Are small creatures that originate in a little
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