The Destruction of King Marutta's Sacrifice and Ravana's Conquest of the Directions

Ravana subdues the proud kings of the earth, travelling like Subhauma Chakravarti with kings of many dress and tongues; everywhere he builds jewelled golden temples, restores old chaityalayas (Jina shrines), worships the Jinas, brings violent enemies of the Jain faith to accept it, gives generously to the poor, and honours lay votaries, co-religionists and munis, serving even dravyalingis (those who keep the outward form without right faith).

Heading north, Ravana hears that the mighty king of Rajapura, proud and wicked from birth, bows to no one and practises violent sacrifice. King Shrenika asks how such sacrifice began, and Gautama tells how King Ayati of the Ikshvaku line in Ayodhya and Queen Surakanta sent their son Vasu to study with the Brahmin Kshirakadamba, husband of Svastimati, alongside the righteous Brahmin Narada and Kshirakadamba's own sinful son Parvata.

When a charana muni remarks that of these four, one teacher and one pupil have good minds and two pupils bad ones, Kshirakadamba takes diksha; Svastimati weeps all night until Parvata finds his father seated naked among the munis, and Narada consoles her. Hearing of it, King Ayati gives the kingdom to Vasu and becomes a muni, and Vasu grows so famous for truth that, seated on a throne with legs of clear crystal, he seems held up in the air by the power of his truthfulness.

Narada and Parvata dispute the text ‘ajair yashtavyam’ (one should sacrifice with aja). Narada explains that dharma is the munis' great vows and the householders' lesser vows, that worship is the true yajna, and that the sages taught aja to mean old grain that will not sprout when sown, offered in household rites; Parvata insists aja means goat, and they agree that King Vasu shall judge and the liar's tongue be cut out.

Svastimati tells Parvata he is lying, for she had often heard his father teach that aja is old barley that cannot sprout, and accuses him of having grown greedy for meat abroad; yet she goes to Vasu, claims the guru-dakshina (teacher's fee) he had once promised her, and begs him to make her son's falsehood true so his pride is not broken. Vasu agrees, though he knows it is wrong.

Before the assembly Vasu declares that Parvata's reading is what Kshirakadamba taught, and the crystal legs of his throne snap; warned by Narada, he repeats the lie, the earth splits and he sinks with his throne, dying and going to the seventh hell. The people cry shame on Vasu and Parvata and praise Narada: where there is dharma, there is victory.

Disgraced, Parvata wanders abroad teaching violent scripture: that animals were created for sacrifice, that killing in sacrifice is no killing because it leads to heaven, that the Sautramani rite excuses drinking liquor and the Goyajna excuses adultery, and by an asura's magic he shows people beings seemingly going to heaven. Such, Gautama says, is the origin of the violent yajna.

At Rajapura King Marutta sits in his sacrificial hall while the Brahmin Samvarta conducts the rite, with many Brahmins and their families gathered for gain and many animals brought for the fire. Just then the eighth Narada, holder of that title, arrives through the sky, wonders at the crowd and the army, and descends.

Asked by Shrenika about this Narada, Gautama tells how the Brahmin Brahmaruchi, living as a forest hermit on roots and fruits with his wife Kurmi, made her pregnant; a muni rebuked him that a renunciant who returns to a woman is like one who eats his own vomit and is reborn among beasts and in hell, and Brahmaruchi became a Jain muni. Kurmi took the lay vows, bore a son alone in the forest in the tenth month, left him there with her blessing to the protection of his own karma, and became an aryika (nun) under Indramalini, head of many aryikas, in Alokanagara.

A god named Jambha, passing through the sky, finds the baby not crying, takes him up and raises him lovingly, teaching him the scriptures; Narada gains the sky-going vidya, reveres his parents, now muni and aryika, and keeps the eleven pratimas (stages of lay renunciation) as a kshullaka (junior renunciant), neither householder nor full monk, fond of dharma, of the vina and song, and of argument and quarrels. Honoured by kings and gods, he daily worships the munis and shrines of the two and a half continents and is called Devarishi, the divine sage.

Seeing the tethered animals, Narada asks Marutta why he has arranged such a sin, and Marutta sends him to Samvarta. Samvarta argues that an omniscient, passionless being could not be a speaker, that the Veda is authorless and therefore authoritative, that it enjoins sacrifice on all but the Shudras as the way to heaven, and that the creator made animals for sacrifice.

Narada replies that the three kinds of omniscience are spoken of only because the omniscient exist, as pictures of lions exist because lions do; that a bodiless, fulfilled God would have no reason to create, let alone create beings to be killed; that the world is beginningless and uncreated, karma and body succeeding each other like seed and tree; and that sacrificers still cry ‘Rise, Vasu, go to heaven’ as they pour oblations, proving that Vasu, who merely approved of violence, went to hell.

He describes the true sacrifice: the soul is the sacrificer, the body the fire-pit, contentment and keshalocha (plucking out the hair) the sacred grass, all possessions the oblation, compassion to all beings the fee, shukla dhyana (pure meditation) the breath-control, the vow of truth the sacrificial post, the restless mind the victim, and the senses offered into the fire of austerity, with Siddhahood as its fruit. The three bodily fires of knowledge, perception and digestion are the dakshina, garhapatya and ahavaniya fires, and gods, whose nourishment is mental, would never eat flesh.

Humiliated, Samvarta and a crowd of Brahmins fall on Narada, who fights back alone with fists, feet, elbows and a club but is hemmed in like a bird and cannot fly away. Ravana's envoy, sent earlier to Marutta, reports it, and Ravana sends soldiers with drawn swords on wind-swift mounts, who free Narada and the tethered men and animals, wreck the sacrificial hall, beat the Brahmins and seize the king, Ravana demanding how living beings could be killed in his realm and refusing their pleas for mercy.

Narada blesses Ravana and asks him to spare even these men, since the Jain teaching gives pain to none, explaining that these false ways arose in the Hunda Avasarpini (an anomalous descending age): when Rishabhadeva became a muni, Kaccha and 4,000 kings followed without understanding and fell into the ways of hermits, and though they returned to right conduct after his Kevala Jnana under a banyan tree and the Samavasarana built by Kubera, Marichi kept his false belief. Through Marichi the Brahmin class founded by Bharata Chakravarti spread like oil on water, and not even Subhauma Chakravarti could wipe it out, so Ravana should simply keep himself from violence.

Delighted, Ravana bows again and again to the Jina and passes a while with Narada in tales of great men. Marutta begs forgiveness, saying he acted on the counsel of the ignorant, asks to be set on the path of dharma and gives Ravana his daughter Kanakaprabha, with clothes, ornaments, elephants, horses and chariots for his warriors; a year later Kanakaprabha bears Ravana a daughter, Kritachitra, of matchless beauty.

Ravana's warriors humble the kings of the three khandas (divisions of Bharata), he weds the daughters of every king, and townswomen hail the dark, lotus-eyed hero bearing the 32 marks and an ardha-chakravarti's (half-world emperor's) glory as the conqueror of Vaishravana and Yama, lifter of Kailash, cause of Sahasrarashmi's renunciation and destroyer of Marutta's sacrifice. Where he passes, crops spring up unsown, farmers bless King Ratnashrava's son, feuds end and no one suffers cold, heat, thieves or beasts, and he spends the chaturmasa (four rainy months) of his campaign happily as kings come to offer him their daughters.