Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 6

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

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CHAPTER THREE the woods. As he was returning, herdsmen told him, “ Look ! look ! some men are breaking down your woods." Flaming with anger like a fire with an oblation, he seized an axe with a sharp edge and ran forward. Then the Rājanyas fled like birds before a hawk. He stumbled and fell into a pit that was like the mouth of hell. As he fell, the sharp axe fell on him and split his head in two. For there was maturing of bad karma. After he had died, Canda became a serpent, poisoning by its look, right there in the woods. For anger which has a sharp continuity goes along into another birth.
“Certainly, he is worthy of enlightenment.” With this idea the Teacher of the World, disregarding pain to himself, went by the same straight road. The Lord entered the old forest which had sand that was smooth from the absence of footprints; with a canal flowing from a well; with trees dried up and broken; strewn with heaps of old leaves; dotted with ant-hills, with huts that had become level ground. There the Lord of the World stood in statuesque posture in a Yakşa temple, his eyes fixed on the tip of his nose.
Then the poison-eyed serpent, haughty, came out of his cave, like a tongue from the mouth of the night of destruction, to roam about. * Roaming through the forest, making lines with his coils touching the dust like the writing of his commands, he saw the Teacher of the World. “Oh! Has some one entered here fearlessly, who does not know me or who scorns me, standing motionless as a pillar! Now I shall reduce him to ashes.” With this reflection, puffed up with anger, he expanded his hood. Terrible with loud hissing, he looked at the Blessed One with his eyes throwing out a streek of flame which destroyed the trees and vines. Then the blazing flames from his eyes fell on the Blessed One's body, like a meteor, hard to look at, falling from the sky on a mountain. They indeed had no effect whatever on the Lord whose power was great. Is a wind, even great, able to shake Meru ?
Blazing with anger at the thought, “ He was not burned now, though trees were burned,” he looked and looked at the