The Story of Vajrakarna's Vow

Rama, Lakshmana and Sita came to a hermitage of matted-haired tapasas (hermits) in bark garments, whose huts were thatched with leaves and grass, whose courtyards held self-grown grain and fearless deer, and whose daughters kept pitchers of sweet water; the hermits honoured them with fruit, flowers and water, a hut and a bed of soft leaves. Next morning the elders begged them to stay, warning that rivers, forests and women are not to be trusted, and hermit women followed them on the pretext of gathering fruit, warning of a terrible, lion-infested forest three kos ahead and of the lofty, impassable Chitrakuta mountain, until Rama gently sent them back.

They entered the deep forest, where lions had slain elephants and reddened the ground, deer fled at lionesses' roars, sleeping pythons made caves echo with their breath, boars churned the ponds and leaping monkeys shook the branches, and they enjoyed Chitrakuta's waterfalls, adorning one another with flowers and resting in creeper bowers like gods in the Nandana grove. After four and a half months they reached the rich Malava country, yet found no people even after going far.

Sitting on a jewelled blanket under a banyan, Rama wondered why so fertile a land was empty, as bare as restraint without detachment, and sent Lakshmana up the tree; he saw lofty Jina temples like Mount Vijayardha, white spires like autumn clouds, flags, houses, wells and lakes like a Vidyadhara city, but no people, only a ragged, long-bearded, sweating poor man hurrying toward them like a deer. Seeing Lakshmana, the man took him for Indra, Varuna, Nagendra or Kubera and fainted from fear, but once brought to Rama and Janaki he forgot his hunger and said he was a kutumbi (peasant) named Siragupta.

Siragupta explained that Simhodara, king of Ujjayini, had bowed many kings by his might, and that his dearest vassal Vajrakarna, lord of Dashangapura, after hearing a nirgrantha muni, had vowed to bow to none but the true God, scripture and guru. Asked by Lakshmana how this came about, he told how Vajrakarna, a cruel, lustful hunter from birth, rode into the Dasharanya forest in the hot season and found a great muni who for four months had endured the sun on a scorching rock, homeless as a bird and fearless as a lion, and mocked him: what good could he do himself, without beauty, clothes, ornaments, helpers or baths, living on food from other men's houses?

The compassionate muni described the seven hells, where beings are crushed in oil presses, cut to sesame-sized pieces and tormented by heat, cold, sword-leaved shalmali trees and the stinking Vaitarani river, called sense pleasures poison fruit, and asked how a good man could kill innocent, mute deer that live on grass and water, urging him to give up violence in thought, word and deed. Awakened, Vajrakarna bowed like a fruit-laden tree and, not yet ready for the monk's life, took from this muni, Pritivardhana, the householder's anuvratas (small vows) and a vow of fasting, vowing to bow to none but the Jina, the nirgrantha munis and the Jina's scripture.

The muni explained the two dharmas, the householder's, mixed with worldly activity, and the ascetic's, free of it, both rooted in right faith, and the four anuyogas (expositions) of the Jina teaching; Vajrakarna fasted that day, broke his fast the next and went home. To serve Simhodara without breaking his vow, he had a ring made bearing an image of Munisuvratanatha, wore it on his right thumb and bowed to that image whenever he stood before his overlord.

An enemy told Simhodara that Vajrakarna bowed not to him but to a Jina image, and Simhodara, enraged and drunk with power, treacherously summoned him from Dashanga to kill him. As the guileless Vajrakarna set out on his elephant for Ujjayini, a young man with a staff stopped him and warned that Simhodara meant to kill him and that warriors on rutting elephants like the Anjanagiri mountains and armoured horsemen were blocking the road.

The youth was Vidyudanga, son of the rich merchant Samudrasangama and his wife Yamuna of Kundanagara, named for being born as lightning flashed in the rains; trading in Ujjayini, he had squandered in six months his father's lifelong earnings on the courtesan Kamalata, and when she praised the earrings of Queen Shridhara he crept into the palace by night to steal them. There he heard the sleepless Simhodara tell the queen that he had raised Vajrakarna from small to great and would not sleep until he had killed him for refusing to bow; struck as if by a thunderbolt, he gave up the theft and came to warn the Jain king, pointing to the dust of the approaching army.

Vajrakarna took Vidyudanga as a friend and shut himself in his fortress; Simhodara, finding it too strong to storm without heavy losses, camped nearby and sent an envoy accusing him of eating the bread of his land while bowing his head to the Arhat. Vajrakarna answered that his land, city, treasury, elephants and horses were Simhodara's to take if he and his wife might leave by the door of dharma, but that he would bow to none but the Jina, the munis and the scripture, for ‘you are master of my wealth, not of my soul’; so Simhodara besieged the city and laid the country waste.

Siragupta added that Simhodara's men had burned his village and his grass hut, and that his shrewish wife had sent him back for their winnowing basket, clay pot and cooking pot and to scavenge from the empty houses. Moved by his misery, Rama gave him the priceless jewelled necklace from his own neck, and the peasant went home as rich as a king.

To escape the fierce Jyeshtha (early summer) sun and find water for the thirsty Sita, they moved on to a fine temple of Lord Chandraprabha near Dashanga; Lakshmana went for food, ignored Simhodara's camp guards and reached the city gate, where Vajrakarna, keeping watch above it, was struck by his looks and invited him to eat. Lakshmana said his elder brother and sister-in-law must eat first, so Vajrakarna sent rich dishes, moon-white milk, ghee and curd by his servants, and Rama, praising a host who fed strangers better than a son-in-law, declared that if such a blameless Jain householder suffered at an enemy's hands while they stood by, their strength was worthless, since not even Bharata could save him, and sent Lakshmana to his aid.

Claiming to be King Bharata's envoy, Lakshmana entered the camp and told Simhodara that Bharata of Ayodhya bade him make friends with Vajrakarna; Simhodara called Vajrakarna wicked, deceitful and ungrateful, vowed to kill or depose him, and mocked Lakshmana and his master, saying one grain shows whether the whole pot of rice is cooked. When Lakshmana warned him to make peace or die, the courtiers rushed at him with knives, daggers, spears and swords, but he scattered them with kicks, knees, elbows and fists, flinging some down by the hair and knocking others' heads together.

When armoured vassals on elephants and horses, and then Simhodara himself on a mighty elephant, surrounded him, Lakshmana tore up an elephant's tethering post and routed the host like a lion scattering jackals, smashing flags, chariots and wheels, while fleeing soldiers cried to throw off armour, abandon the elephants and keep quiet lest the terrible man hear them. As the warriors' wives and the women of Dashanga marvelled and Vajrakarna told his men that dharma protects in every crisis, Lakshmana pulled Simhodara from his elephant, tied a cloth around his neck and led him off like a bullock.

Simhodara's chief queen, with children and elders, fell weeping at Lakshmana's feet and begged for her husband's life; Lakshmana, who had threatened to hang him from a great tree, relented and brought him to the temple, where the trembling Simhodara fell at Rama's feet offering his kingdom and service, and the queens begged Sita for protection. Rama, his voice like thunder, told Simhodara that his life now depended on doing whatever Vajrakarna asked.

Vajrakarna came with his family, circled the temple three times, praised Lord Chandraprabha and asked after the brothers and Sita, and Vidyudanga too arrived and was praised by all as his true friend. Rama lauded Vajrakarna's faith, unshaken as the peak of Sumeru in the wind, since even before Rama his head had not bowed, and when offered any wish, Vajrakarna said that as a Jain he wished no being harm and asked only that his master Simhodara be freed, at which everyone cried ‘Blessed!’

Lakshmana freed Simhodara and joined the two men's hands in friendship; Vajrakarna received half of Simhodara's kingdom, with half his land, wealth and army, his plundered goods were returned, and Vidyudanga became his commander. Vajrakarna betrothed his eight daughters to Lakshmana and Simhodara and other kings pledged three hundred maidens, but Lakshmana said he would marry only after winning a seat of rule by his own arms, and Rama added that once they had settled near Mount Chandanagiri or the southern ocean and fetched their two mothers, Lakshmana would wed them; the princesses, wilting like lotuses in frost, went home with their fathers to wait.

Vidyudanga brought his parents and kin with great wealth and held a joyful reunion, and love grew between Vajrakarna and Simhodara. At midnight Rama, Lakshmana and Sita quietly left the temple, to the grief of those who came at dawn and found them gone, and travelling at ease, resting in lovely groves and drinking sweet fruit juices, they reached the city of Nalakuvara, rich with jewelled mansions and splendid Jina temples.