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74
KALPA SÚTRA.
her longings should be gratified. Thus spending her time happily, in sitting, standing, sleeping, reclining, and taking exercise, the period of her confinement arrived, and the child was born. It was in the summer season, in the first month, in the second demi-lunation, during the bright half of the moon of Chaitra, on the thirteenth day, after a gestation of nine months and seven and a half days, that the venerable ascetic Mahávíra was born, a faultless child, when the planets were at their greatest elongation, and when they were in a fortunate conjunction with the moon, while all the regions were in a state of placidity, while there was no darkness, but all luminous, without any louring redness, and nightingalest singing
*This fortunate conjunction of the moon with the planets, so often mentioned, is as follows:
षटईं सप्त७ रंत्र८ संस्थैभैम्यैरिन्दोः शुभोपियोगोयं
That is to say, the fortunate conjunction is, when Mars and the Moon meet in the 6th, 7th, or 9th Lunar Asterism. As to what is said above about the planets being all in their places of greatest elongation, it is probably a mere rhetorical flourish, the planets, according to the Hindu astronomers, having never been in that position since the commencement of the Kali Yuga, B.C. 3102, and the Author had no intention, as will afterwards appear, of throwing back the birth of Mahávíra to that remote
era.
†The Syama (Turdus macrourus). The original is
