King Dasharatha Hears the Dharma

From the eighth day of the bright half of Ashadha the Ashtahnika festival (the eight-day festival of Jina worship) was celebrated with great pomp in Ayodhya: Dasharatha's queens, sons and kin and all the townsfolk made mandalas of five-coloured jewel powder and garlands of gems, perfumed water with cardamom and camphor, sprinkled the ground with fragrant water, and adorned temple doorways with brilliant cloth and walls with coloured minerals. Dasharatha had the Jina image bathed (abhisheka) with great splendour, fasted for eight days and worshipped the Arhat with the eight substances and with natural flowers and flowers of gold and jewels, as Indra and the gods worship on Nandishvara Dvipa.

The king sent the gandhodaka (holy water from the Jina's bathing) to his four chief queens; young maids quickly brought it to three of them, who touched it to their heads and eyes, but Queen Suprabha's share was carried by an aged chamberlain and was late. Feeling slighted and blaming her own lack of past merit, Suprabha decided that only death could cool her burning heart and secretly asked the storekeeper Vishakha to bring her poison; he hesitated but, supposing it was for some medicine, went to fetch it while she lay on her bed covered with a cloth.

Not seeing Suprabha among the queens, Dasharatha, who loved her especially, came to her palace just as the servant arrived saying, ‘My queen, take this poison’; the king took it from him, sat on her bed, drew her up beside him when she stepped down to sit on the floor, and reproved her that life is dearest of all, that death is the greatest sorrow, and that, as she knew from the Jina's doctrine, those who die by poison or weapon fall into bad births. Suprabha said she was not angry with him but hurt that he had sent the holy water to the other queens and not to her; just then the old chamberlain arrived with it, and the three queens came and soothed her, pointing out that a mere maid had brought theirs while the old chamberlain had been sent to her, so the king's love for her was no less, and she gladly touched the gandhodaka to her eyes and head.

When the king angrily asked the chamberlain why he had been so slow, the old man, trembling with folded hands, described his decrepitude: once his arms were like an elephant's trunk and he bounded over rough ground like a royal swan, but now he hobbled with a stick, his back bent like a drawn bow, his hair white as bone, his teeth gone, his senses dim, the earth dark before his eyes and his feet landing where he did not intend. He had served the kingdom since the days of Dasharatha's father and could not leave it now; he feared death less than failing in his service, and begged for mercy rather than anger.

Hearing this, Dasharatha rested his cheek on his left hand and reflected that the body is fleeting as a water bubble, youth as brief as the evening glow, and pleasures great cheats, sweet only to look at, bitter in their fruit and passing like a rainbow, so that the best of men give them up for austerity. He had ruled the earth long, enjoyed every pleasure and had mighty sons, and the custom of his lineage was to hand the royal fortune to a son and enter the forest for austerities; though his mind turned from pleasures, he stayed at home a few days more, for, as Gautama told Shrenika, whatever is to come to a person comes at its own time and place.

Then the great Acharya Sarvabhutahita, possessed of manahparyaya jnana (knowledge of others' thoughts), arrived with his sangha (order of monks) on the bank of the Sarayu; his monks dispersed to deep forests, mountain caves, forest temples and hollow trees, while he himself settled for the rainy season on a stone slab beneath naga trees in the Mahendrodaya garden, a spot free of small creatures and of women, eunuchs, children, villagers and animals. During the rains such monks, both charanas (sky-walking monks) and those who walk the earth, keep vows as hard as a sword's edge.

At dawn Dasharatha woke to music, worshipped the Jina and, riding a she-elephant of the Bhadra breed and bowing to monks and temples along the way, went to the Mahendrodaya garden, for it was his custom to visit any sage who came near Ayodhya; dismounting, he bowed and heard from the Acharya the four anuyogas (expositions of scripture), the lives of the great beings of past, present and future, the cosmos and what lies beyond it, the six substances, the six classes of living beings, the six leshyas (soul-colourings), the six eras, the origin of the Kulakaras (patriarchs) and of the Kshatriya and other lineages, the seven tattvas, the nine padarthas and the five astikayas. Filled with love of dharma, he returned, told his ministers of the Jina's teaching and went on enjoying the fruits of merit with his queens, and the chapter closes by reminding that the true worth of human life lies in giving up pleasures and taking up yoga (spiritual discipline).