Book Title: Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6
Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

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Page 135
________________ ..MAHĀVĪRA'S WANDERING AS AN ASCETIC 95 burned by a forest-fire, the basest of gods created a figure of King Siddhārtha. “What is this, which is very difficult, that you are doing, my dear? Give up this wandering. Do not disregard my request." “In old age Nandivardhana has abandoned me without protection," Trišalā, who had been created, spoke in this way again and again. When the Lord's mind was untouched even by the talk of these two, the wretch made a camp with inhabitants. Not finding stones there, the cook, intent on cooking rice, made a hearth out of the Lord's feet and set down a cooking-pot. The fire, which he kindled at once, burned severely the soles of the feet of the Lord of the World like a forest-fire the foot of a mountain. The Lord's beauty, like that of gold, did not diminish, even when he was burned. Then the basest of gods made an outcaste who had a terrifying cry. The outcaste hung small bird-cages on the Lord's neck, ears, arms, and legs. The Lord's body was so pierced by the birds with blows from their bills and claws that it was perforated with a hundred holes, like a cage of theirs. When the outcaste was reduced to worthlessness like a ripe leaf in this, too, he created a sharp wind which produced great prodigies. Tossing big trees and grass up in the air, scattering a cloud of dust and stones and gravel in all directions, filling the space between heaven and earth completely, like filling a bellows, the wind picked up the Blessed One again and again and dropped him. His wish unfulfilled even by that sharp wind, this disgrace to the assembly of gods quickly made a cyclone. Strong enough to move mountains, it whirled the Lord like a lump of clay on a wheel. When he was whirled around by the wind that was like a whirlpool in the ocean, the Lord, his mind fixed on one thing, did not leave meditation at all. “Tormented many times, he is not disturbed, his mind hard as a diamond. How shall I, my word broken, go to the Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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