Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

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

Page 85

MAHAVIRA'S FIRST SIX YEARS AS AN ASCETIC 45 Therefore, it is not fitting for me, seeking the good of all, to remain here."
The Lord's five resolutions (75–77) With this reflection, the Master, feeling extreme disgust with existence, a depository of compassion, took these five resolutions: never to live in the house of an unfriendly person; always to stand with the body in kāyotsarga; to maintain silence generally; to eat in the hand as a dish; politeness must not be shown to a householder. These are the five.
Story of the bull (78–110)
After he had taken these resolutions, after a fortnight the Lord went to the village Asthikagrāma even during the rains. The Lord of the World asked the villagers there for permission to live in the temple of a Yakşa, Sūlapāņi. The villagers said: “The Yakșa does not allow any one to live here. Listen to the long story of the Yakşa.
This village was named Vardhamāna in the past. There is a swift river here with muddy ground on both banks. A trader, Dhanadeva, came there with five hundred carts loaded with merchandise. He had a great bull that he put in the yoke and in a minute he pulled all the carts across the river though it was hard to cross. The great bull, noble as a spirited horse, fell on the ground, vomiting blood from his mouth from pulling excessive weight. The merchant made the bull a witness and said to the villagers, “This bull must be guarded like my own life on deposit.' He gave the villagers much money for grass and water for the bull. For that is the duty of an owner. Then after making a friend of the bull by his gifts of food and water, the trader himself, with tears in his eyes, went elsewhere. The villagers took the money but, wicked like evil doctors, did not provide the bull, like a sick man, with grass, water, et cetera. Broken-hearted, tormented by hunger and thirst, his body only skin and bones, the bull thought;