The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden: An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories (Penguin Classics)

by Phyllis Granoff

  ‘Having been banished from the city, Padmaéri and Buddhasamgha joined two merchants who were leading a caravan to some distant land. That night the two caravan leaders and their party ate some poisoned food, not knowing it was poisoned, and they all died’. Buddhasamgha had also eaten the poisoned food. The poison spread throughout his limbs and he was on the verge of death. Buddhadāsa came to know of everything that had happened from his servants and, filled with sorrow, he hastened to the spot. When he saw his son on the verge of death, he cried to the people with him, “Surely, people, Padmaérī has poisoned my son. And all these other people in the caravan have also been killed by that woman for no reason at all.” Thus did Buddhadāsa in his deluded state make this accusation against Padmasri, although it was without a grain of truth. Having made this public accusation, Buddhadāsa took his son by the hand and threw him at the feet of Padmasri. When he did this, Padmaérī declared, “Through the power of my observance of the Jain rule never to eat at night, may my husband stand up.” As soon as she uttered these words, Buddhasamgha was free of the poison and stood up, hale and hearty.

  ‘At that very moment the gods in the sky in their delight lavishly worshipped Padmasri. Amazed, the invisible gods worshipped Padmaérī from heaven; again and again they proclaimed, “See how devout Padmaérī is! See how she has carried out her vows as a Jain lay devotee! Look at her great faith in the Jina, her deep faith in the Jain doctrine!” When King Dantivāhana and his ministers saw the miracle that Padmaérī had performed, they too were greatly astonished. They transferred the great burden of the kingdom to their sons; they were filled with disgust for the pleasures of worldly existence and their minds were now set on achieving Final Release. The King Dantivāhana, his ministers and his subjects all renounced their possessions and became monks under the guidance of the Jain monk éridhara. Even Buddhadāsa, along with Padmasri, Buddhasamgha and some other merchants, abandoned their wrong beliefs and accepted the doctrine of the Jains’

  This was the story that Padmalatā told the merchant and his other wives. ‘When I saw that miracle that Padmaāri performed, I became firm in my faith in the Jain doctrine.’

  (from theBrhatkathākośa of Hariṣeṇa, No. 68)

  26

  MADANAKĪRTI

  In Ujjain dwelt the Digambara Viśālakīrti. He had a disciple named Madanakīrti. Now this Madanakīrti, having defeated all his rivals in debate in the three directions, the East, West, and North, and having obtained the honorific title, “Crest Jewel among all the Philosophers,” had come back to Ujjain, which was graced by the presence of his teacher, and there he had humbly submitted himself to Viśālakīrti. Madanakīrti had become famous everywhere, and everywhere people talked of him. He boasted to his teacher and his teacher was amused. Then after a few days Madanakīrti said to his teacher, ‘O Blessed One! I want to defeat in debate the philosophers in the South. Please, let me go to the South.’ The teacher said, ‘My child! Do not go to the South. For that is the land of pleasures. No monk could go there and not be shaken from his vows, no matter how great an ascetic he might be.’ Madanakīrti was puffed up with pride in his own learning and so he ignored these words of his teacher. And he set out with a host of disciples, carrying with him a net, spade and ladder, to seek out any possible rivals in the seas, on earth and in heaven. After he had first crushed all the philosophers in Mahārāshtra, Madanakīrti finally arrived in Karnātak.

  There in the city Vijayapura he sought an audience with the king. Fornally ushered into the royal assembly hall by the door-keeper, Madanakīrti saw the King Kuntibhoja seated amongst all his courtiers. Now this king was himself learned in the three Vedas and he was eager for the company of other learned men. Madanakīrti praised the king with these verses:

  ‘Lord, how can we tell which one is the snake śesa or which are the stars? How can we know which is the milk ocean and which is the moon; which is a jasmine blossom and which is a lump of camphor, what is a hailstone and what is mother-of-pearl? How can we find the Himalaya mountains, when everywhere is made shining white by your fame which shimmers like so many drops of molten mercury, heated to the boiling point by the blazing flames of your military prowess, which leap and sputter from your valiant and prideful strong arms!’

  ‘Your fame, O Kaikata, Kuntibhoja, plunges deep into the heavenly river, the Ganges; encircling the Guardians of the Quarters and making the earth into a blazing ball of light, it traverses the seven oceans, and as if to proclaim to all and sundry that it belongs like a faithful wife to you and you alone, it touches the world of Visnu on high, and reaches below into the retherworld to stroke the many crests of the snake śesa who supports the universe.’

  The king was charmed with his words. The Digambara was given lodgings near the royal palace. The king commanded him, ‘Write a book that tells of the deeds of my forebearers.’ Madanakīrti said to the king, ‘My Lord, I can compose five hundred verses in a day, but I cannot write them down that fast. Give me a scribe to assist me.’ The king said, ‘My daughter, whose name is Madanamañjarī, will sit behind a curtain hidden from your sight and write down your verses for you.’

  The Digambara began to compose the work. The princess wrote down five hundred verses each day. And so passed a few days.

  One day the princess heard Madanakīrti’s voice, which was sweet like the voice of a warbler in springtime, and she thought, ‘He must be as handsome as his voice is beautiful. But how can I see him from behind this curtain? I must think of something. I know, I shall have the cooks put too much salt into his food.’ Now Madanakīrti also wanted to see the princess, who was so learned and who also had such a sweet voice. When he found his food too salty, the Digambara said, ‘How this makes me shiver!’ The princess replied, ‘A cold wind blows no good!’ And with their coquettish banter back and forth and their clever puns and jibes, both pushed back first the curtain of respectful distance demanded by convention that had kept them apart, and then the real curtain of cloth that divided them from each other. They beheld each other’s divine beauty. At once the Digambara said:

  ‘In vain does the lotus creeper spend its life, if it has never beheld the orb of the moon with its delicious cooling beams.’

  And the princess, for her part, replied:

  ‘And the moon, too, rises in vain, if it does not awaken the lotus creeper with its touch.’

  And as the saying goes, “The many arrows of love strike fast and furious once lovers have enjoyed the first pleasurable glimpse of each other”; so these two gave up their virginity for passionate lovemaking.

  People began to talk. The book was not progressing very fast. One evening the king took a look at the work. ‘Why did you do so little today?’ All the Digambara had written there were two or three verses of quite poor quality indeed. And then he said to the king, ‘Lord! Long ago I made the solemn promise that I would never recite my work and have it written down by someone who was not learned. Now your daughter did not understand this section very well. And so it took some time. That is why the book is not progressing so fast.’ The king thought to himself:

  ‘This sounds like a sorry excuse to me. I shall have to take a good look and see just what those two are doing together.’

  One day, as soon as the sun came up, the king went alone in disguise to the room where they were wont to work and hid behind one of the wall-partitions. At that very moment the Digambara said these words to the princess, words that a lover would say to his angry mistress:

  ‘O you, with your lovely eyebrows! Since you became angry with me, I have stopped eating; I cannot bear even to mention a word about women and I have not touched my fine perfumes and vials of fragrant incense. O angry one, be angry no more. I throw myself at your feet. Have mercy on me now. Without you, my beloved, the world is a cold and joyless place for me!’

  When he heard this poem, the king was sure that the two were behaving wantonly and he crept silently from that room. The Lord of the Earth returned to his assembly hall. Furious, he
summoned the Digambara to him at once. When the Digambara got there, the king said to him, ‘O scholar! What is this new verse I heard you recite, the one that starts off, “O lovely one”! Since you became angry with me, I have stopped eating?’ The Digambara reflected, ‘The king has definitely seen me. I have been caught red-handed. Never mind. I still must answer him in some way or another.’ And he thought of all sorts of things and, finally, he said to the king, ‘My Lord! For the last two days my eye has been hurting me terribly. I was addressing my eye with this verse, trying somehow to make it stop tormenting me.’ And with those as opening words, that Digambara, undaunted, went on and on like this, explaining away his extraordinary behaviour. The king was secretly delighted by Madanakīrti’s clever speech, but he was still furious over his unpardonable offence. And so raising one eyebrow in an expression of his fury, he called to his servants, ‘Tie this fellow up! And kill him for his criminal acts.’ Madanakīrti was bound by the king’s men.

  Having heard what had happened, the princess grabbed a knife and rushed into the assembly hall with thirty-two of her friends who were similarly armed. She stood right before the king and said,

  ‘If you release my beloved, then all will be fine. If you do not release him, then you will be guilty of thirty-four murders. One will be the murder of the Digambara and the others will be the murder of these thirty-three young women.’ At that point the king’s ministers advised him:

  ‘My Lord, you yourself brought these two together. And the presence of a woman for a young man is the springtime shower that makes the tree of love blossom in all its fullness. Who is to blame for what has happened? For what they say is true:

  The glances of women, even in a painting, rob the minds of those who see them; what chance does a man have before the throbbing glances of a live woman, with all her amorous games?

  ‘Show mercy and release the Digambara. And give your daughter to him.’ He listened to their words, released the Digambara and made his daughter the Digambara’s wife. And the Digambara was given a share of the kingdom. He gave over to his father-in-law whatever riches he acquired in conquest. Abandoning his religious vows, he enjoyed worldly pleasures.

  From Ujjain, his teacher Viśālakīrti heard all these things that had happened to Madanakīrti. And he thought, ‘How mighty is the power of wealth, youth, and the company of bad friends; for through these things even a man like Madanakīrti, faithful to his monastic vows, learned, a fine philosopher, and adept in spiritual exercises, has stumbled onto a false road that can lead only to the most terrible rebirths in the next life. Alas, alas! The mind is beset by some strange distortion, rife with all the many delusions that arise upon the destruction of right discrimination; unknowable, never even experienced before in any other birth, this strange process at once is like ice to the warmth of wisdom within and causes terrible burning pain.’

  Thinking such things, he sent four of his most skilled disciples in order to bring Madanakīrti back to his senses. When they got there they said to him: ‘O wise one! Turn away from the momentary pleasure of the company of a woman, a pleasure that will soon vanish. Seek the company of the damsels Compassion, Wisdom, and Friendliness. For in hell no firm breasts adorned with pearl necklaces will save you, nor any woman’s thighs with jangling girdle bring you solace.

  ‘Your teacher recalls you to your senses with words like these. Accept his instruction. Do not be deluded.’

  Shameless, Madanakīrti wrote down some verses for his teacher on a piece of paper and told them to deliver them. They went back there. The teacher read the verses:

  ‘Logic can be twisted to prove anything you want. The scriptures are all different. There is no teacher whose words can be accepted as the absolute truth. They say that the real truth is hidden in a secret place. The true path is that one followed by every man.’

  ‘Seeing my beloved is the only divine sight I need. You may call your philosophy divine sight, but who needs it, when even the man with lust and sin can feel such bliss from the sight of the woman he loves.

  ‘The man who has passionately and forcibly kissed his angry mistress, while she was biting her tender sprout-like lips in rage and furiously shaking her fingers at him, while her eyebrows danced up and down as she shouted, “Let go of me, you good-for-nothing! Let go of me!” and her eyes were clouded from the steam of her own breaths that escaped, despite everything, from the passion of the moment, such a man has truly tasted the nectar of immortality. Seeking this divine drink, the Gods were silly, indeed, to have gone to such fuss to churn the ocean.’

  When he read these verses and others similar to them, the teacher was silent. As for Madanakīrti, he had a very good time for himself indeed.

  (from the Prabandhakośa of Rājaśekharasūri, p.64)

  27

  REVATI

  How there was in the land of the Pāndyas a city called South Mathurā. It was rich in grain and money and adorned with many Jain temples. There reigned King Pāndu, intent upon protecting his subjects; he had charmed everyone in the world by his many excellent virtues. His wife was named Sumati, “The Clever”, and indeed she was thought to be quite smart. She was chaste, beautiful and soft-spoken, and her fame reached the very corners of the world. An ascetic, a teacher named Munigupta, also lived there. He was a veritable ocean of virtue and knew all of the sacred texts; he possessed supernatural knowledge and practiced severe austerities.

  One day some Vidyādhara prince endowed with magical powers came to the city South Mathurā his name was Manovega, “Swift as Thought”, and indeed he dashed to the city with uncustomary speed. Filled with devotion, he circumambulated the most excellent Jain temple three times and said a prayer to the Jina; such prayer puts an end to all suffering. He worshipped the ascetic Munigupta with all the devotion due one’s guru, and then bowed down to the other ascetics. Finally he sat down near Munigupta. The wise Manovega was silent for a few moments, listening to the discourse on the Jain doctrine; then he bowed his head in reverence and said to Munigupta, ‘Blessed One! I wish to go to the city of Śrāvastī to pay respects to the Jina; tell me what I may do for you when I get to the sacred city.’ When he heard Manovega’s words, Munigupta spoke to him, with a voice so deep that it made the peacocks think the clouds were rumbling and set them dancing. ‘If, O lay disciple, you go to the lovely city of Śrāvastī to worship the Jinas, who are worthy of being worshipped by hosts of gods, then you must carefully convey my words of blessing to the lay disciple, the lady Revatī, whose mind it totally permeated with thoughts of the Jain doctrine.’ Having heard those words of the ascetic, that lay disciple was surprised. Not understanding the monk’s intention, he thought to himself, ‘This monk takes special care to send his blessings to the lay disciple, the lady Revatī, but does not have any special words of reverence for the monks nor for the male lay disciples.’ So he thought to himself for awhile, and then, desirous of testing the ascetic, he said to him again, ‘I will go to the city of Śrāvastī.’ The ascetic heard what the lay disciple said; he told Manovega, who had a crooked mind and was definitely operating under false impressions, ‘If you are going to that city to worship the Jinas, then you must convey my blessings to the lay disciple, the lady named Revatī.’ Manovega was even more surprised and angry, too. He asked, ‘Blessed One! Tell me, what makes that lady Revatī so special that even when I asked you three times you still sent your blessings all three times to her and not to any of the male lay disciples? Furthermore, in that city there is a great Jain ascetic named Bhavyasena, who practices severe austerities; he knows from memory the eleven texts and is a leader of the four-fold Jain community, the monks, nuns, and lay disciples, male and female. He is the best of the monks and removes all doubts concerning the verities of the Jain doctrine, the soul and other entities. Why did you not send your respects to a noble ascetic like him?’

  When he heard these words of the Vidyādhara, the lord of ascetics replied with a voice so deep that it made all of the world echo with the sound. �
�That Bhavyasena of whom you spoke is deluded and does not believe in the existence of earth-souls. Not to believe in the categories as they have been expounded is an example of false belief, and the soul that is sullied by false belief wanders endlessly in the cycle of rebirths. That is why I did not exchange respectful greetings with him, O Vidyādhara, nor did I send him any friendly words. And as for what you have asked me, why I would send words of blessing to the lady Revatī and not to any of the male lay disciples, listen to me as I explain why that is so. Revatī is endowed with right belief; she adheres to the doctrine propounded by the Jinas, and her mind is repulsed by the actions of heretics and those who are monks but adhere to wrong doctrines. She accepts only the Jina as God and the renunciation of all possessions as the path to release; she believes that the highest religious action is non-violence and that true asceticism is control of the senses. She accepts as her teachers only those steadfast ones who follow the correct code of conduct and observe total chastity, those ascetics whose bodies are adorned by the virtue of forbearance. It is for this reason that I send my blessings to Revatī and not to the others, whose souls are sullied by false belief.’