Sita Conceives and Longs to Worship the Jina

Rama and Lakshmana enjoy dharma, artha and kama to their hearts' content. One night Queen Sita, asleep in a palace like a celestial vimana on a bed white as autumn clouds, sees two dreams in the last watch of the night and wakes to the sound of divine instruments; in the morning, bathed and adorned, she goes with her companions to Rama to ask what the dreams mean.

In the first dream two mighty ashtapadas (fabulous eight-legged beasts), white as the autumn moon, roaring like a churning ocean, tall as the peak of Kailasa, adorned with ornaments, with lovely manes and gleaming fangs, entered her mouth; in the second, a violent gust of wind threw her from the top of the Pushpaka vimana (aerial chariot) to the ground. Rama explains that the ashtapadas mean she will bear two sons at once; the fall from the Pushpaka is not auspicious, but she need not worry, for by the power of charity cruel planets and enemies will be pacified.

Spring arrives like a king at war: the flowering tilaka trees are his armour, the blossoming neem his royal elephant, and the mango and lotus blossoms his bow, arrows, quiver and sword. The Mahendra garden, lovely as Nandana, the garden of the gods, fills with fruit and flowers, and swans, cranes and chakravaka birds sing the praises of this king.

As Sita grows weak under the weight of her pregnancy, Rama asks her to tell him any wish in her heart, promising to fulfil it at once. Shyly and gladly she says that she longs to visit many chaityalayas (Jina temples), to bow to the auspicious Jina images of five colours and to worship the Jinendra with flowers of gold and jewels, and that she wants nothing else.

Overjoyed, Rama sends a doorkeeper to the ministers with orders: every Jina temple in the city is to hold special celebrations, the temple in the Mahendra garden is to be adorned beyond compare, and the people are to decorate the temples with arches, flags, bells, fringes and canopies of gold, jewels and cloth and offer double the usual articles of worship. He also orders special worship at the nirvana-kshetras (places of liberation), Kailasa, Sammedashikhara, Champapura, Girnar, Pavapura, Shatrunjaya, Mangitungi, Gajapantha, Bavangaja and others, because Sita's auspicious dohala (pregnancy longing) brings merit, and says he will soon visit all these holy places with her.

The doorkeeper leaves another in her place and carries the command to the ministers, who set their servants to work. The temples are adorned with pitchers at the doors, strings of pearls on the walls, pictures in gems, mirrors of pure gems on the pillars and mandalas (sacred diagrams) of five kinds of jewel powder, with thousand-petalled lotuses, flags of fine cloth on staffs of five-coloured gems raised on the spires, and many halls for music and dance, until the Mahendra garden looks like Nandana itself.

Rama, like Indra, goes to the garden with all the citizens, the royal household and the queens, riding an elephant with Sita like Indra with Shachi, and Lakshmana follows in splendour; everyone eats and drinks in the forest, the queens stay in bowers of creepers and banana trees, and the rest camp as befits them. Rama sports and bathes in a lake of clear water like Indra in the milk ocean, then with divine offerings worships the Jinendra together with Sita according to the rites.

Amid his eight thousand queens, lovely as goddesses of the forest, Rama looks like spring in bodily form, or the moon among the stars, and every delight of the five senses is his: food like nectar, fragrant unguents, fine beds and seats and scented garlands. Worship and dance are offered with devotion in the Jina temples, Rama's love for worship and its celebration grows ever greater, and he stays happily in the forest for some days with his queens.