Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 213

JAINISM
who are you? Brahmā? Vişnu? Siva? 16 I perceive that you can see everything, no matter where." He raised his ax and deliberately brought it down. The log was split. And there were the two serpents, cut in half.
The boy's heart bled when he beheld the writhing, dying creatures. “Do you not feel compassion?” he demanded of the old man. "Grandfather, you are without knowledge. These austerities of yours are absolutely worthless."
Mahīpāla, at that, lost all control. “I see. I see, I see!" he cried. “You are a sage, a very great sage. But I am your grandfather. Besides, I am a heimit. I practice the penance of the Five Fires. I stand for days on one leg with lifted arms. I suffer hunger; thirst; break my fast only with dry leaves. Surely it is proper that a youngster, such as you, should call the austerities of his grandfather fruitless and unwise!"
The little prince answered firinly, but in a sweet and wonderfully gentlc tone. "The spirit of cury," he said, "infects all of your practices; and you are killing animals here every day with your fires. To injure others, even if only a little, is to be guilty of a great sin; but great suffering is the consequence even of a little sin. Such practices as yours, divorced as they are from right knowledge, are as barren as chaff separated from grain. Give up this meaningless self-torture; follow the way of the
Tīrtharkaras and perform right acts, in right faith and right knowledge: for that is the only road to emancipation."
The Lord Pārsva then chanted a hymn to the dying serpents and they expired in his presence calmly. He returned to his palate and they-following such a meritorious death-weic immediately reborn in the underworld: the male was now Dharanendra, “Lord of the Earth” (the cosmic snakc, ścșa, who
16 The basic Ilindu gods are common to all the great religions of India, Buddhism and Jainism as well as the Hindu sccts; cf. supra, p. 184, Editor's note.
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