Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

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

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CHAPTER ELEVEN like a minister. He went on the elephant swifter than the vehicles of the servant-gods to Vitabhaya and gave the statue to the slave-girl. She deposited the statue in the shrine, took the original one, and came. The king mounted the slavegirl and the statue on the elephant. The king also mounted the elephant and arrived in Avanti so quickly that the city appeared to have come to meet him.
Episode of Bhāyala Svāmin (540–559) One day the king and the hunchback gave the sandalwood statue made by Vidyunmālin to Bhāyala Svāmin, a merchant from the city Vidiśā, for worship. This was an important thing for them always devoted to sense-objects. One day Bhāyala saw two men with bodies like masses of light and in their hands paraphernalia for making a pūjā. When he saw them pleasing to the sight and like friends from birth, Bhāyala asked, “Who are you?' and they replied: “We are Nāgakumāras, named Kambala and Sambala, living in Pātāla. At the command of Indra Dharaṇa we have come to the shrine to worship the god of god's statue made by Vidyunmālin and for this reason we have the paraphernalia for worship. By a path through the water of the river Vidiśā we constantly dive and come up here like swans.'
Bhāyala said: 'Gods, show me, who have had recourse to the Blessed One, your houses in Pātāla today. By your favor let my desire to worship the eternal statues there be fulfilled. The sight of gods is not in vain.' So Bhāyala was conducted by them, who had agreed, by that same path, leaving his pūjā half-finished from impatience. There Bhāyala worshipped the statues of the eternal Arhats. From pleasure at that Dharaṇa said to him, “Ask a favor.' Bhāyala said: * Let it be so that my name is known everywhere. Verily, an eternal name is the only manly thing for men,' Indra Dharaṇa said: “King Caņņapradyota will make a divine city there with your name. Because you came with a pājā half-made, in the course of time the image, actually concealed,