Muni Rama's Alms Round and Return to the Forest

Gautama tells Shrenika that not even Indra could describe all of the great sage Rama's virtues. Having completed a vow of five fasts, Rama walks with careful steps into the city of Nandasthali on his round for alms, radiant as the rising sun, like a mountain on the move, his heart as pure as crystal, as if dharma itself had taken form and the joy of the three worlds had gathered into a single figure.

The townspeople, spellbound, tell each other they have never seen such a form: blessed is his patience, valour, beauty, radiance, calm, purity and freedom from attachment. Watching the ground four cubits ahead to protect living beings, arms hanging at his sides, the Jain sage comes on serenely, and they wonder whose good fortune it will be to feed him, recognising him as Ramachandra, ornament of the Raghu clan and a mountain of virtue, the very sight of whom makes the eyes fruitful and the mind pure.

The cry of padgahan (the ritual invitation of a monk to take food) rises through the city, the lanes fill with men and women, and households prepare pure prasuka (properly prepared, free of living matter) food and wait at their doors in clean clothes holding auspicious pitchers of water, bowing and calling, ‘Lord, stay, stay, the food and water are pure.’ People hail him, wishing him victory and growth in austerity, and in every home they hurry to ready golden vessels of milk, curd, sugarcane juice, dal, rice, kheer, sweet cakes, sweets with sugar candy, cardamom and dry fruit, cool water, puris and shrikhand.

In their delight people forget even their own children; they run through the streets jostling one another until some fall, and the uproar makes the elephants break their tethers and charge through the city, their ichor running like streams in the roads, while the horses, terrified of the elephants, leave their fodder, snap their ropes and bolt neighing, throwing the townsfolk into confusion.

Hearing the commotion, the king, who is eager to give, watches the sage from the roof of his palace and is captivated; he loves devotion to munis but lacks discernment, and sends his samantas (vassal lords) to bow to the Digambara sage and bring him to the palace for food. The equally foolish vassals fall at Rama's feet, telling him to eat at the king's house where the food is pure and delicious, since the dry, tasteless fare of ordinary homes is unfit for him, and they forbid the townspeople to offer food, asking what they know of feeding a sadhu.

Hearing this, the great sage takes it as an antaraya (an obstacle that forbids a monk to accept food) and leaves the city for the forest without eating, to everyone's dismay. True to the Jina's commands and to the conduct laid down in the Acharanga scripture, he sits in kayotsarga (the meditation posture of abandoning the body), absorbed in meditation on the pure self.

The text explains that a sadhu's alms round cannot proceed without the navadha bhakti (ninefold devotion) of the giver, that a sadhu avoids the forty-six faults and accepts only faultless food, unasked and free of obstacles, and that he eats to sustain the Three Jewels, not to nourish the body. A lay devotee endowed with humility and the other six virtues of a giver, who with his own hands and with purity of substance, place, time and intention feeds such ascetics and the fourfold sangha, gains great merit and sunlike fame.