Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

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

Page 295

DASĀRŅABHADRA, ŠALIBHADRA, DHANYAKA 255 in misfortune. The boy herded the small calves of the townsmen there. For that is an easy livelihood suitable for poor boys. .
One day a certain festival took place there and Sangama saw rice pudding eaten in every house. When he had gone home, he asked his mother for rice pudding. She said: “I am poor. How would there be rice pudding in my house?”. Begged again and again by the boy from ignorance, she wept aloud, remembering her former prosperity. Her neighbors, their hearts pierced as it were by the pain of her crying, asked her the reason for her grief. She told them in stammering words the reason for her grief. They gave her milk, et cetera and then she cooked a rice pudding. She carried a dish of molasses, ghi, and rice pudding, and gave it to the boy; and went into the house on some task.
Just then a muni, who had fasted for a month, came for alms to break his fast. He was a boat to him (the boy) for crossing the ocean of births. He reflected: “Like a sentient thought-gem, like a living wish-granting tree, like a cow of plenty that is not an animal, the great sādhu has come very fortunately because of my past merit. Otherwise, how would 1, wretched, meet such a worthy person? Because of some maturing of past merit today my wish, goods, and a suitable person happened. Indeed, this meeting is a triveņi.198
With this thought he picked up the dish and gave the rice pudding to the sādhu. The muni, compassionate, took it as a favor to him. The muni went away and Dhanyā came from the house. “I think he ate that,” and she gave him rice pudding again. Insatiable, he ate rice pudding until he was full. During the night, thinking of the sādhu, he died from indigestion from the pudding.
From the power of the gift he came into existence in the womb of Bhadrā, the wife of Gobhadra, a rich man in the
198 69. The meeting-place of the 3 rivers: the Gangā, the Yamunā, and the Sarasvati.