Vijaydharmasuri

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

Page 42

36 COMMENCEMENT OF TRIUMPHAL TOUR
VISIT TO THE LAND OF HIS BIRTH In the year 1900 Dharma Vijaya went to Mahuwā, the land which was his birthplace, and where he had never been since his consecration as a monk. When he arrived there, he found his father dead; but his mother, who was anxious to see her son, came, along with other people of the village, to meet him and to reverence him. As he entered the village with his monks and disciples, the mother's eager eyes naturally turned towards the object of her affection. She was exceedingly glad to behold her son after the lapse of so many years. She looked at him with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow, delight and despair. She beheld her son--the son who was the source of her joy and her happiness----bare-headed and bare-footed, in the garb of a begging monk. She beheld her beloved son-the son to whom she had given birth, but whom, she thought, she could no longer call her own—the son whom she could no longer receive in her own house, nor clasp in her own arms. And, when the people of the village saw the monk, as he walked slowly in the midst of his white-clad disciples, and joined their hands, and did homage to him, how many of them could have recognized in that monk of the serene face and saintly appearance, the naughty Müla Chandra, the bad youth who used to sit in his father's shop and squander his father's money in gambling and speculation! Dharma Vijaya spent the Chaturmāsa of the year, the four months of the rainy