Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

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

Page 355

OMNISCIENCE OF MAHAVIRA
birth-ceremony festival for his son, giving gifts, whatever they wanted, to petitioners, Brahmans and others. Kūņika named his son Udayin, with a very fine festival making the day an auspicious day. Prince Udayin, gold color, grew day by day, surrounded by guards, like a tree in a forest. With the boy held on his hip constantly, the king assumed the beauty of a pillar with a doll of Sal-wood. Caressing the boy with speech with indistinct whispers, the king heaped wealth on the boy unable to speak. While sitting, lying, walking, eating, the king did not let the baby, like an auspicious position of the fingers, go from his hand.
One day the king, Śreņika's son, sat down to eat and, devoted to his son, set Udayin on his left knee. When Kūņika had eaten half his food, the baby made water and the stream, like a stream of ghi, fell on the food. "May there be no interruption of my son's stream," the king, Śreņika's son, did not move his knee. Such is the affection for a son. Picking up in his hand the food that was wet, he ate it just so. This was a pleasure from love for his son. Kūņika asked Celaṇā who was sitting there," Mother, was there or is there a son dearer to any one?" Celaṇā said: "Villain, wretched man, disgrace to the family, do you not know that you were exceedingly dear to your father? I knew then by an evil pregnancy-whim that you were an enemy of your father. For the pregnancy-whims of pregnant women are like the embryo. Knowing that you, wretch, still an embryo were your father's enemy, I undertook an abortion from desire for my husband's welfare. Nevertheless, you were not destroyed by these various abortion-remedies, but on the contrary you flourished. Everything is wholesome for the very strong. Such a wish of mine was fulfilled frequently by your father with the hope, 'When shall I see the face of my son?' 'He is an enemy of his father," I exposed you when you were born, but your father brought you back carefully like his own life. At that time a finger of yours had been pierced by a tail-feather of a wild hen and had become exceedingly disgusting, filled with pus
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