The Past Lives of Bharata and the Elephant

The Kevalis Deshabhushana and Kulabhushana, whose ordeal Rama and Lakshmana had ended on Mount Vamshasthala (after which the Garuda lord gave them the divine weapons that won the war), arrive with many munis at the Mahendrodaya garden of Ayodhya. Rama, Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrughna, the four mothers Kaushalya, Sumitra, Kaikeyi and Suprabha, hundreds of royal ladies, Sugriva and the Vidyadharas set out at dawn, the elephant Trailokyamandana walking in front, and dismount at the sight of the gandhakuti (the Kevali's seat) to worship.

The Kevali teaches that love and hate are the causes of samsara and right faith, knowledge and conduct the causes of moksha; the householder's anuvratas (lesser vows) lead to liberation in time and the sage's mahavratas (great vows) directly. Compassion for living beings is the root of the Jain dharma, whose chief fruit is moksha and whose lesser fruits are the ranks of Indra, Dharanendra, Chakravarti, Baladeva and king. Lakshmana then asks why the elephant raged and then grew calm; the Kevali replies that the crowds maddened it, but the sight of Bharata woke the memory of its past lives.

At the end of the third age Rishabhadeva was born to Nabhiraja and Marudevi in Ayodhya; when the celestial dancer Nilanjana died while dancing before him, he renounced the world and took the great vows in the Tilaka garden, which has since been called Prayaga. Four thousand kings took diksha with him but, unable to bear the hardships, broke their vows and lived on forest fruits. Among them Marichi, Bharata's son, took the garb of a staff-bearing ascetic, and under his influence the brothers Suryodaya and Chandrodaya, sons of King Suprabha and Queen Prahladani, strayed onto a false path and wandered through many births.

Chandrodaya was reborn as Kulankara, son of King Haripati and Queen Manolata of Nagapura, and Suryodaya as Shrutirata, his Brahmin priest. The sage Abhinandana told Kulankara that his grandfather had become a snake hidden in wood that some ascetics were about to cut; Kulankara saved it and, sickened by the ascetics' violence, resolved to become a Jain muni, but Shrutirata talked him into the Vedic ascetic path instead. His unfaithful queen Shridama, fearing he knew her secret, poisoned both king and priest.

The two wandered through many animal births: mice, frogs, peacocks, snakes and dogs; once the priest was an elephant that crushed the king's soul as a frog, once a cat that ate it as a rooster, and at last both were crocodiles hacked by a fisherman's axe. They were then born in Rajagriha as Vinoda and Ramana, poor sons of the Brahmin Brahmasha and his wife Ulka. Ramana went abroad, mastered the four Vedas and, returning at nightfall, slept in a yaksha shrine where Vinoda's unfaithful wife Samidha had arranged to meet her lover Ashokadatta; Vinoda came with a sword and in the dark killed his own brother.

Vinoda was reborn as a wild buffalo and Ramana as a blind bear; both burned in a forest fire, became Bhils, then deer, which a hunter sold to the third Narayana, Svayambhuti, as he returned from worshipping Vimalanatha. Kept beside a Jain temple, fed from the palace and seeing sages and hearing scripture, Ramana's deer died in samadhi and became a god, while Vinoda's died in anguish and wandered on among animals.

Vinoda became Dhanadatta, a merchant of Kampilya worth twenty-two crore dinars (each of four tanks of gold), and Ramana, coming down from heaven, was born as his only son Bhushana. Told that the boy would take diksha, Dhanadatta kept him at home amid every pleasure, but one dawn, hearing the gods' drums, Bhushana hurried to worship the Kevali Shridhara, was bitten by a snake on the stairs and became a god of the fourth heaven. He was then Jagaddyuti, a reluctant king in Pushkaradvipa who served the sages and was reborn in the Devakuru bhogabhumi and the second heaven, and then Prince Abhirama, son of the Chakravarti Achala in the western Videha.

Married against his will to three thousand princesses, Abhirama kept the asidhara vrata (the sword-edge vow of perfect celibacy amid his wives), taught them the Jain dharma until they too took vows, fasted and practised severe austerities for sixty-four thousand years and died reciting the Namokara mantra, rising as a god to the sixth heaven. That soul is now Bharata, a charama sharira (one in his last body) who will reach nirvana in this very life.

Dhanadatta's soul was born in Podanapura as Mridumati, a gambler cast out by his Brahmin parents, who later returned unrecognised and was taken back by his weeping mother. While burgling King Nandivardhana's palace in Shashankanagara, he overheard the king resolve to become a Digambara monk, was struck with shame and became a muni himself. But when the people of Alokanagara mistook him for Gunanidhi, the charana sage who had fasted four months on Durgagiri, and honoured him, he kept silent out of pride and never confessed the deceit.

His austerities carried Mridumati to the sixth heaven, where he and Abhirama's soul were dear friends for ages, but the hidden deceit brought him down as a mighty elephant in the Shallaki forest on Mount Nikunja, of the line of the Vijaya elephants, until Ravana tamed it with his vidyas and named it Trailokyamandana. That is why the elephant, seeing its old friend Bharata, grew calm; it will now keep the householder's vows, be reborn a god and is itself near liberation. Knowing how souls come and go, the wise give up sense pleasures and hold to the Jina's compassionate dharma.