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YASASTILAKA AND INDIAN CULTURE
The strange news reached Srīdatta who at once returned home and hatched another plot. He posted a hired assassin and a wicked priestess in a desolate shrine of the goddess Durgā in the outskirts of the city, and asked Dhanakirti to go there at nightfall with some offerings for the idol. Dhanakirti consented, but Śrīdatta's son Mahābala, seeing him going out alone in the dark, dissuaded him from the visit, as he was a stranger to the place, and offered to go to the shrine himself with the offerings. Dhanakirti accordingly stayed at home, and Mahābala went and met with death at the assassin's hands in the shrine of Durgā.
Overwhelmed with grief at the death of his son, Śrīdatta communi. cated the whole story of his conspiracy to his wife, and asked for help to get rid of the unwelcome guest. She promised co-operation, and, taking a number of sweetmeat balls, black and white, mixed the latter with poison, and asked her daugh Srīmatī to give them to her husband to eat, while the black ones were to be given to her father. She then went away to the river for a bath. Srimati served the sweetmeat balls in her mother's absence, but by mistake gave the poisoned ones to her father, whose death was instantaneous, and followed by that of her mother, who in her grief committed suicide by swallow. ing some of the poisoned sweets.
Sometime after the death of Srīdatta and his wife, Dhanakirti who continued to prosper was one day seen by king Viśvambhara. The latter was struck with the beauty of the young merchant, and decided to give his daughter in marriage to him, thus fulfilling the prophecy made about Dhanakirti even before his birth. His father Guņapāla, hearing reports of his continued luck and prosperity, now came from Kaušāmbi and met his wonderful son. The courtesan Anangasenā also came to see him.
One day the merchant Guņapāla, accompanied by Dhanakirti and his family and Anangasenā and Srimatī, paid a visit to the sage Yasodhvaja, and, after obeisance, entreated him to explain the mystery of Dhanakirti's providential escapes from death and the continued success of his glorious career. The sage pointed out that Dhanakirti was in his previous birth the fisherman Mrgasena, and he was now enjoying the fruits of the vow of non-violence which the latter had taken for a day. The courtesan Anangasenā was the fish whose life had been spared by Mrgasena on the day of his vow, while Srimati was no other than Ghantā, the wife of Mrgasena, who had entered the flames after her husband's death. Having heard the story of their previous birihs, Dhanakīrti, Anangasenā and Srimati, all three, took the vow of renunciation and became ascetics under the Jaina system of discipline, and attained a blessed state after death.
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