Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

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

Page 273

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STORIES OF THE PLOUGHMAN AND OTHERS
Story of Dardurānka (59–138)
After this explanation, the Blessed One delivered a sermon warning against sin in a speech adapted to every dialect. Then a man, whose body was in an advanced stage of leprosy, came there, bowed, and sat down near the Tirtheśa, like a mad dog in a house. Then fearlessly he anointed the Blessed One's feet with the discharge from his sores like much sandal. Seeing that, Śreņika thought angrily, “When he gets up, he must be killed since, very wicked, he is intent on injury to the Lord of the World."
Just then the Lord Jina sneezed and the leper said, “Die,” and when Śreņika sneezed, he said, “ Live.” Abhayakumāra sneezed and he said, “Live or die.” The butcher Kāla sneezed and he said, “Do not live nor die.” Angered by the speech, “ Die,” to the Jina, the king instructed his soldiers, “ When he has got up from this place, seize him.”
At the end of the sermon, the leper got up and bowed to Mahāvīra and was surrounded by Sreņika's soldiers like á boar by Kirātas. Even as they looked on, assuming a divine form instantly, he flew up in the air, giving an imitation of the sun. This was described by the soldiers and the next day the Lord was asked by the king with astonishment, “Who is the leper?" and the Lord informed him, “He is a god.” Again the king asked the Omniscient, “How did a god become a leper or from what reason?”
The Blessed One said, “ There is a city, Kaušāmbi by name, known to all. Śatānika was its king. In this city there was a Brāhman, Seduka by name, always the boundary of the poor and the extreme limit of fools.
One day his wife, who was pregnant, said to him: Brāhman, bring me ghi for the birthing. Otherwise, the pain is not to be borne. He said to her, 'My dear, I do not have in any way cleverness by which I can obtain anything anywhere since the powerful are to be won by the arts.' She said to the Brāhman: Go and ask the king. For there is no 30 M