Sita's Austerities and King Madhu's Renunciation

Gautama describes Sita's austerities after she left husband, sons and kingdom: it was the era of Munisuvratanatha, the twentieth Tirthankara, Sakalabhushana Kevali was wandering the earth, many took the great or lesser vows, and under Rama's reign all Ayodhya followed the Jain householder's dharma and obeyed the Kevali's word as kings obey a Chakravarti. Sita, who had once outshone goddesses in beauty, became like a scorched madhavi creeper: condemning again and again the state of being a woman, she went unbathed, her hair grimy with dust and her body caked with sweat and earth, wasted herself with fasts of two and three days, a fortnight and a month, and broke them only as scripture allows.

Her flesh and blood dried away until the web of her bones and veins showed like a wooden doll's and she looked like a dried-up river; she walked with her eyes on the ground four cubits ahead, gentle and compassionate, and took alms only to keep the body fit for penance, so changed that no one, her own or a stranger, could recognise her. The other aryikas spoke of nothing but her matchless austerity and she became the foremost among them; after sixty-two years of penance, with thirty-three days of life left, she undertook a fast unto death, died in samadhi, and her soul was reborn as the Pratindra (deputy Indra) of the Achyuta heaven, the sixteenth. There the Pratindra, in a gem-lit vimana tall as a peak of Sumeru and attended by thousands of goddesses, shone like the moon among stars, coming down to the middle world to worship, visit holy places, serve sages and hear the dharma in the Tirthankaras' assemblies.

When Shrenika asks who was the Indra of that heaven, Gautama answers that it was the soul of King Madhu, who later, in the time of Neminatha, descended to be born as Pradyumna, son of Krishna's queen Rukmini, while Madhu's brother Kaitabha was born as Shambu, son of Krishna's queen Jambavati; never sated with this nectar, Shrenika asks for their story. In the rich land of Magadha, in the large village of Shali, lived the brahmin Somadeva and his wife Agnila, whose sons Agnibhuti and Vayubhuti were skilled in worldly learning but so proud of their birth and scholarship that they thought no one wiser, knew nothing of the Jain dharma and held the pleasures of the senses to be good.

When the acharya Nandivardhana, who had avadhi jnana (clairvoyant knowledge), came to the forest with many munis and the villagers went to see him, the brothers set out in anger to defeat the sages in debate, ignoring their parents' warning. The sage Satvika, also clairvoyant, stopped them, and when they asked where he came from he asked them the same, then said he already knew their village, parents and names and asked from what state of existence they had come into this birth. When they scoffed that no one could know past lives, he told them they had been two jackals near this village, who, during seven days of ceaseless rain that kept a farmer from his field, ate his wet leather strap lying in the mud, died of the pain and were born as Somadeva's sons through the involuntary shedding of karma.

The farmer, the sage went on, was later reborn as his own son's son and, remembering his past life, kept silent, since his father was his former son and his mother his former daughter-in-law; turning to him in the assembly, the sage said that this is the way of the world, where beings change roles like dancers, kings becoming paupers and fathers sons, and bade him call his present parents father and mother. Overjoyed, the young brahmin circled the sage three times, fell at his feet like a tree blown down by the wind and took muni diksha, many others became monks or lay followers, and people brought the hides of the two jackals and laughed that the meat-eaters had come back as fools to argue with sages. The people praised the munis as the true brahmins, wearing forgiveness as their sacred thread and offering oblations in the fire of meditation, and explained why they are called sadhu, acharya, anagara, bhikshuka, shramana, muni and yati.

Reviling the sages, the brothers went home and returned at night with drawn swords to kill the sage Satvika, who had left the sangha to meditate alone in kayotsarga on a clean rock in the cremation ground of a dark forest full of bears, tigers, lions, snakes and spirits. Biting their lips, they shouted that no one would save him now from them, renowned pandits and gods on earth whom he had shamelessly called jackals, but the Yaksha guarding the forest, seeing them about to kill a blameless sage, pinned them where they stood. At dawn the people found them frozen on either side of the sage with naked swords in their hands and cried shame on them, and the brothers, realising this was the power of dharma, resolved to take the lay vows if they escaped.

Their parents came and begged the sage to spare their wayward sons; the sage said he was angry with no one and all beings were his friends, but the Yaksha declared that those who mock or harm sages reap what they sow, as a crooked face shows crooked in a clean mirror, and that he had pinned these proud and deceitful men for trying to kill an ascetic. At the sage's gentle plea that they were foolish youths and that the Yaksha, as a protector of the Jina teaching, should forgive them, the Yaksha set them free; they circled the sage, said they could not bear a monk's vows and took the lay vows with right faith. Their parents took vows but broke them and fell to the first hell, while the brothers, keeping their faith and renouncing violence, died in samadhi and became gods of the first heaven.

Descending, the brothers were born in Ayodhya as Purnabhadra and Kanchanabhadra, sons of the merchant Samudra and his wife Dharini, kept the lay vows again and returned to the first heaven. Their former parents, coming out of hell as a chandala (outcaste) and a dog, followed the Jain dharma at the brothers' urging and died in samadhi: Somadeva's soul became a god ruling the Nandishvara continent, and Agnila's soul was born a princess of Ayodhya who, taught by that god, took the vow of celibacy, became an aryika and attained a good birth, and both will in time reach moksha.

From the first heaven Purnabhadra and Kanchanabhadra were born as Madhu and Kaitabha, sons of King Hema and Queen Amaravati of Ayodhya, so mighty that they brought the whole earth under their sway; only King Bhima, proud of his strength, defied them, and when their loyal vassal Virasena of Vatapura wrote that Bhima had ravaged his land, Madhu marched out in anger with a great army. At Vatapura the foolish Virasena, ignoring his wife's plea not to show the king the treasures of their house, had his beautiful queen Chandrabha wave the arati lamps before Madhu and serve him food with her own hands, and Madhu, infatuated, thought it better to live in the forest with her than to rule the earth without her. His ministers warned that pursuing her now would ruin his campaign and cost him his kingdom, so he took Virasena along, defeated Bhima and subdued many other kings.

Back in Ayodhya, Madhu invited all the kings and their queens for a spring festival, including Virasena with Chandrabha, who again begged not to be taken; after a month of revels in the forest he sent the others home with honours, and some days later sent Virasena off with great courtesy, saying that wondrous ornaments being made for Chandrabha were not yet ready and she would follow. The simple king suspected nothing and left her behind, and Madhu brought her into his palace, consecrated her with water from beautiful pitchers as his chief queen and, blind with pleasure, thought himself the equal of Indra. Hearing that Madhu had kept Chandrabha, Virasena went mad with grief, wandered about, became a disciple of the ascetic Mandava and practised the five-fire austerity.

One day Madhu came late from court, having judged a case of adultery, and when Chandrabha laughingly asked the cause, she teased that such men deserve great honour; angered, he said that those who even touch or speak with another's wife are sinners and those who enjoy her must be punished and banished. Chandrabha replied that if adultery is so great a crime he should punish himself, since he too had taken another's wife: as the king, so the people, and if the very water that makes seeds sprout and keeps creatures alive should burn, who is left to cool them? Stung, Madhu admitted she spoke the truth, praised her again and again and confessed that, proud of his fortune, he had sunk in the mire of the senses, and he wondered how he might be freed from his sin.

Just then the sage Simhapala came with a great sangha to the Sahasramravana (grove of a thousand mangoes) at Ayodhya, and Madhu, after hearing him with his queens and people, renounced the world and became a muni; Chandrabha gave up all royal splendour to become an aryika, Kaitabha too took the great vows, and Madhu's son Kulavardhana ruled Ayodhya, beloved of the people. After keeping his vows for hundreds of years and practising the four aradhanas (devotions) of faith, knowledge, conduct and austerity, Madhu died in samadhi and became Achyutendra, Indra of the sixteenth heaven, beside whom Sita's soul became Pratindra, while Kaitabha became Aranendra, Indra of the fifteenth. Gautama marvels that by the Jina teaching even such wrongdoers can become Indras and even attain moksha: Madhu's soul later became Pradyumna, a Kamadeva (one of the supremely handsome men of the age), and reached liberation, Kaitabha's soul became Shambukumara and reached the highest state, and Gautama now turns to the story of Lakshmana's eight heroic sons.