Vijaydharmasuri

Author(s): A J Sunavala
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Page 30

24 BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS Sprung from a humble Vaishya family of the Visā Shrimāli clan, he was born at Mahuwa in Kathiawar, in the year 1868. The father, Rāma Chandra, and the mother, Kamla Dēvī, called the child Müla Chandra. He soon became the joy of his parents and friends. There appears to have been nothing extraordinary in his early career, except that he grew up like a child of the streets, apparently in ignorance of his high destiny. As we trace the life which he led as a boy, as a youth, down to the date when he assumed the garb of a monk, we find him leading a purely thoughtless life,-a life that did not recognize its own greatness, with the mind not yet realizing its mission, nor the part it had to play. He was sent to the village school along with other boys of his class and age, and among these he soon distinguished himself very highly in various forms of physical exercise and field games. In his studies properly so called, however, he failed to give his teacher and parents satisfaction or promise of any kind, being habitually irregular in attendance and inattentive to his lessons. The schoolmaster gave him up in despair, and the father at last took the boy, when he was only ten years old, into his shop, thinking that he would help him in his daily work.
GAMBLING HIS ONLY INTEREST Mūla Chandra, however, would neither learn nor earn. His only interest was in gambling and speculation, which were the predominant vices of the time, and to which he had become very strongly addicted,