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TWO PRAKRIT VERSIONS OF THE MANIPATI-CARITA
44. So at daybreak I shall consecrate your eldest son Municandra as king and shall forthwith take the vows.' 45. Her heart made anxious by care, her eyes full of tears, wretched and dispirited, bowing low at her lord's feet, Pṛthvi addressed the king:
46. I did but jest: for the king this white hair is of good omen since he still has very many black ones.'
47. Laughing slightly the king said: 'My lady, by saying that this is a white hair of good omen do those who lust after this world console their hearts,
48. but in real truth it is the first envoy sent to say that old age is come; therefore I am exceeding, though but by a little, the limits of my predecessors.'
49. Knowing her lord's decision she let down her hair and fell at his feet weeping. Her eyes full of tears she began to speak :
'Alas, my lord, you who are dear to my heart, fortunate, like an ocean of tenderness, why do you abandon to the ancestral spirits me and your son and your kingdom? 51. I and your son are dearer to you than your own life, so why do you go away leaving us without a protector?' 52. Then the king said: Do not weep, lady, but reflect on this, that the wanderer through the cycle of existence is never released from sickness, old age and death.
50.
53. So now I shall take the vows.' She replied: 'What shall I, unhappy woman, do in the lay life when your feet are my refuge ? '
54. The king said: 'This decision is fitting for those like us, but you are rendered tender by ease so that to refrain from bathing and other comforts will be hard to bear for you.'
55. She replied: 'I am not more attached to comfort than you; in your footsteps I will accomplish the initiation which is difficult to be carried out.
56. Did not Rājimati who was fragile as a lotus take the vows in the way enunciated by Neminatha who was the adornment of the three worlds?'
