The Great Section on the Origin of the Clans

Gautama names the four great clans: the Ikshvaku, from which the Surya (solar) clan arose, the Soma (lunar) clan, the Vidyadhara clan and the Harivamsha. Rishabhadeva was born an Ikshvaku, and his son Bharata’s son Arkakirti (arka means sun) gave the Surya clan its name; his line ran through Sitayasha, Balanka, Subala, Raviteja, Mahabala, Atibala and many others down to Mriganka, kings who handed their realms to their sons and became Nirgrantha (possessionless) monks.

The Soma clan began with Bahubali, son of Rishabha’s second queen, and his son Somayasha, followed by Saumya, Mahabala, Subala, Bhujabali and others, who became monks and reached liberation directly or after a life as gods. The Vidyadhara clan descends from Nami through Ratnamali, Ratnaratha, Ratnachitra, Chandraratha, Vajrajangha, Vajrasena and a long line of kings named for the thunderbolt (vajra) and lightning (vidyut), among them Vidyuddamshtra; some became Siddhas, some gods, and some, dying attached to their thrones, fell to lower births.

Vidyuddamshtra, lord of both Vidyadhara ranges, flying over Videha, saw the sage Sanjayanta meditating as still as a mountain; out of past-life enmity he carried him off, threw him down on the Panchagiri mountain and urged people to kill him, but the sage bore the fists and stones without a flicker of anger, conquered the assault and attained Kevala Jnana (omniscience).

Dharanendra, the sage’s brother in a former life, bound all the Vidyadharas in serpent nooses and was about to kill Vidyuddamshtra, but at the gods’ plea spared him, stripping him of all his vidyas (magical sciences); he ruled that they could be regained by great austerities before Sanjayanta’s image, and that any Vidyadhara who passed over a Jina temple or a muni without bowing would lose his vidyas.

Sanjayanta explained the enmity: he had been Hitakara, a kind merchant of Shakata village, then King Shrivardhana of Kumudavati, whose purohit Vahnishikha, posing as the truthful Satyaghosha, hid the merchant Nemidatta’s gems until Queen Ramadatta won the purohit’s ring at dice and used it to recover them; punished by the king, the purohit became, one birth later, the Vidyadhara lord, while the king became a muni, a god and, many births on, Sanjayanta. Vidyuddamshtra’s line then continued through his son Dridharatha, Ashvadharma, Ashvayu, Ashvadhvaja, Padmanabhi and dozens more, down to Vahnijati and Vahniteja.

Fifty lakh crore sagaras after Rishabha’s liberation, King Dharanidhara of the Ikshvaku line ruled Ayodhya; his son Tridashanjaya, who later attained moksha on Kailasa, and Queen Indrarekha had a son Jitashatru, who married Vijaya, daughter of King Bhavyananda and Queen Ambhodamala of Podanapura, and their son was Ajitanatha, the second Tirthankara, called ‘the Unconquered’ because at his birth his father conquered all kings. Ajitanatha, husband of Sunaya, Nanda and others, renounced on seeing a lotus pond that bloomed at dawn wither by sunset, took initiation with 10,000 kings, broke his two-day fast at King Brahmadatta’s house, and after fourteen years of austerity attained Kevala Jnana, with 90 Ganadharas and a lakh of munis.

Sagara, son of Ajitanatha’s paternal uncle Vijayasagara and Queen Sumangala, became the second Chakravarti. In his time Purnaghana (also called Purnamegha), Vidyadhara lord of Chakravala in the southern range of Vijayardha, sought Utpalamati, daughter of King Sulochana of Vihayastilaka; on a soothsayer’s advice Sulochana refused, meaning to give her to Sagara, so Purnaghana attacked and killed him, while Sulochana’s son Sahasranayana fled with his sister into a forest full of lions and ashtapadas.

A magical horse carried Sagara to Sahasranayana’s hiding place; Utpalamati recognised the Chakravarti, her brother gave her to him in marriage, and she became his chief queen, the stri-ratna (jewel among women); Sagara gave Sahasranayana rule over both Vidyadhara ranges, and Sahasranayana avenged his father by killing Purnaghana in battle.

Purnaghana’s son Meghavahana fled, flying from his palace with the swans into Ajitanatha’s Samavasarana (divine assembly hall); when Indra asked why he was afraid he told his story and sat in the humans’ chamber, the pursuing warriors turned back, and Sahasranayana himself came, but by the Lord’s glory the two became friends.

Asked about the fathers, the Lord told how Bhavana, a merchant of Sadgati worth four crores, sailed abroad out of greed while his son Haridasa squandered everything on gambling and courtesans and began robbing the king’s palace through a tunnel; returning, Bhavana went into the tunnel to bring him back, and the son, taking him for an enemy, killed him with his sword. Reborn together as dogs, jackals, cats, bears, mongooses, buffaloes and bulls, killing each other in turn, they at last became munis in Pushkalavati of Videha and the gods Uttara and Anuttara in the eleventh heaven, and then Bhavana became Purnaghana and Haridasa Sulochana, which is why Purnaghana killed Sulochana.

At Sagara’s request the Lord told the sons’ feud: in Padma city the wealthy mathematician Arambha, fearing that his two friendly disciples Chandra and Avali might displace him, turned them against each other, and Chandra killed Avali over a cow he had sold and Avali had bought back from the cowherd, after which Avali became a Mleccha (barbarian) who ate the bull that Chandra had become, and later a mouse eaten by Chandra as a cat. They were then Kuta and Karpatika, slave-born temple keepers of Sambhramadeva in Kashi, the Vyantara gods Rupananda and Svarupananda, Kuladhara and the purohit’s son Pushpabhuta, whose quarrel over a plough a monk’s sermon calmed so that both became Jains and went to the third heaven, and Amarashruta and Dhanashruta, sons of Ajaya and Jayavati in Dhatakikhanda, who became munis after their king Sahasrashiras met a Kevali, rose to the eleventh heaven and were born as Meghavahana (Chandra) and Sahasranayana (Avali).

The Lord also explained Sagara’s deep love for Sahasranayana: Arambha, by feeding a muni, was born in the Devakuru land of enjoyment, then in the first heaven, then as Vratakirtana, son of King Hari and Queen Dhara of Chandrapura, as Payobala, son of Mahaghosha and Chandrani of Ratnasanchaya in Videha, as a god of the fourteenth heaven, as Jayakirtana, son of King Yashodhara and Queen Jaya of Prithivipura, and in the Vijaya Anuttara heaven before becoming Sagara, while Avali, the disciple he had loved, was now Sahasranayana. Hearing this, Meghavahana and Sahasranayana remembered their past lives, gave up all enmity and sang the Lord’s praises, to the wonder of the sage Simhavirya and other munis, the gods and Sagara’s kings.

Pleased that he had sought refuge in Ajitanatha, Bhima and Subhima, Indras of the Rakshasa gods (a class of Vyantara deities), granted Meghavahana the Rakshasa island in the Salt Ocean, 700 yojanas long and wide, with Mount Trikuta (9 yojanas high and 50 wide) at its centre and the jewelled city of Lanka, 30 yojanas across, at its foot; Bhima, who had been his father in a past life, added a radiant jewelled necklace and the Rakshasa vidya (magical science). He also gave him Patala Lanka, an underground refuge holding the city of Alankarodaya, 6 yojanas deep and 131.5 yojanas wide: Lanka was to be the capital and Patala Lanka the shelter in times of danger.

Joined by his rejoicing kinsmen and many Vidyadharas, Meghavahana flew in a vimana across the Salt Ocean, entered Lanka, worshipped at its temples and took up his palace; he married Suprabha, daughter of King Ratimayukha and Queen Anumati of Kinnaragita, who bore him a son, Maharaksha.

Later, in Ajitanatha’s assembly, Sagara asked about the great souls of this age, and the Lord, speaking in Ardhamagadhi without moving his lips, named the 24 Tirthankaras, of whom Shanti, Kunthu and Ara would also be Chakravartis, and the 12 Chakravartis, Bharata, Sagara, Sanatkumara, Maghava, Shanti, Kunthu, Ara, Subhauma, Mahapadma, Harishena, Jayasena and Brahmadatta, along with 9 Vasudevas, 9 Prativasudevas and 9 Baladevas; he said he himself had descended from the Sarvarthasiddhi heaven, and that after the sun of Mahavira set, false teachers would flourish.

Hearing this, Meghavahana reflected that pleasures are like a black cobra’s hood and kinsmen stay only while their purpose is served, gave Lanka to Maharaksha and took initiation under Ajitanatha with 110 kings. Maharaksha ruled with Queen Vimalaprabha and had three sons, Amararaksha, Udadhiraksha and Bhanuraksha, and Ajitanatha attained liberation on Sammeda Shikhara.

Sagara had 96,000 queens and 60,000 sons; the sons worshipped on Mount Kailasa and began digging a moat around it with the danda-ratna (staff jewel), and the Nagendra’s angry glance struck them all dead except Bhimaratha and Bhagiratha. Fearing the shock would kill the Chakravarti, the court let an old Brahmin speak to him of impermanence, how even Bharata, Arkakirti and the Indras pass away like birds that leave a tree at dawn; seeing only two sons before him, Sagara understood, gave the kingdom to Bhagiratha, took the monk’s vows with Bhimaratha in Ajitanatha’s presence, attained Kevala Jnana and became a Siddha.

Bhagiratha asked the sage Shrutasagara why only two had survived: once, when the villagers of Antika mocked a fourfold sangha bound for Sammeda Shikhara, a potter stopped them and praised the monks, and when the king later burned the whole village for one man’s theft the potter was away; he was reborn as a merchant, then a king, a muni, a god and Bhagiratha, while the villagers became cowrie shells, then insects crushed under an elephant’s foot, and at last Sagara’s sons. Hearing this, Bhagiratha became a muni and reached the supreme state.

In Lanka, Maharaksha, sporting in the Pramada garden, saw a bee lying dead inside a lotus that had closed at sunset and reflected that if a bee dies a slave to one sense, he, a slave to all five, faces worse; just then the sage Shrutasagara arrived with his sangha, and his sermon taught that compassion is the mark of dharma, that every creature loves its life as we love ours, and that violence, theft, falsehood, others’ wives and greed must be given up.

The sage revealed Maharaksha’s past: as Pratima, son of Hita and Madhavi of Podanapura, he had joined the cries of ‘Jaya’ at a great puja held by King Hemaratha and was reborn a Yaksha who saved munis under attack near Kanchanapura in Videha; then, as Udita, son of the Vidyadhara Tadidangada and Shriprabha, he made a nidana (a wish for worldly glory) on seeing the Vidyadhara king Amaravikrama, rose to the second heaven and became Meghavahana’s son, and now only eight days of life remained. Maharaksha held a great puja, crowned his elder son Amararaksha, made the younger, Bhanuraksha, crown prince, gave up all possessions, food and water in silence, and died in samadhi (meditative calm) to be reborn as an excellent god.

Amararaksha married Arinjaya, daughter of King Shridhara and Queen Vidya of Kinnaranada, and Bhanuraksha married Gandharva, daughter of King Surasannibha and Queen Gandhari of Gandharvagita; Amararaksha had ten sons and six daughters. The sons founded cities named after themselves that became homes of the Rakshasas, Sandhyakara, Suvela, Manohlada, Manohara, Hamsadvipa, Hari, Yodha, Samudra, Kanchana and Ardhasvarga by Amararaksha’s sons and Avarta, Vighata, Ambhoda, Utkata, Sphuta, Ritugraha, Tata, Toya, Avali and Ratnadvipa by Bhanuraksha’s, and the two brothers then became munis and attained moksha.

Later in Meghavahana’s line, King Maharaksha and Queen Manovega had a son named Rakshasa, after whom the clan was called Rakshasa, though its people were Vidyadhara humans, not demons; his sons by Queen Suprabha were Adityagati, who married Sadanapadma, and Brihatkirti, who married Pushpanakha, and Adityagati’s son Bhimaprabha had 1,000 queens and 108 sons. The line ran on through Pujarha, Jitabhaskara, Samparikirti, Sugriva (not the later Vanara king), Harigriva, Shrigriva, Sumukha and crores of later kings of Lanka, faithful to their own wives, who renounced in turn and reached moksha or the heavens up to Sarvarthasiddhi, until Kirtidhavala, son of King Dhanaprabha and Queen Padma, ruled Lanka like Indra, obeyed by many Vidyadharas.