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PĀRSVA
devoted himself in the wilderness to the most extreme austerities, not in a humble spirit of renunciation or contrition, but with the intent to acquire superhuman, demonic powers with which to win revenge. Wheu Marubhūti was apprised of these penances, he thought that his brother had at last become purified, and therefore, in spite of the warnings of thic king, paid him a visit, thinking to invite him home. He discovered Kamatha standing-as had been his custom day and night-holding on his upstretched hands a great slab of stonc, overcoming by that painful exercise the normal states of human weakness. But when the suture Tīrthankara bowed in obeisance at his feet, the terrible hermit, beholding this gesture of conciliation, was so filled with rage that he fung down the great stone on Marubhūti's head, killing him as he bowed. The ascctics of the penance-grove, from whom the monster had learned luis techniques of self-affliction, c'xpelled him immediatcly from their company, and he sought refuge among a wild tribe of Bhils. He became a highwayman and murderer, and in due course clicd, following a life of crime.
This grotesque story sets the stage for a long and complicated series of encounters, full of surprises-a typically Indian affair of deaths and rcappearances, illustrating the moral theory of re
1. The wicked Kamatha passes through a nun ber of forms paralleling those of his virtuous, gradually maturing brother, reappearing time and again to repeat his sin of aggression, while Marubhūti, the future Tīrthaikara, becoming more and more harmonious within, gains the power to accept his recurrent death with equanimity. Thus the dark brother of this Jaina legend actually serves the lighi-even as Judas, in the Christian, serves the cause of Jesus.* And just as Judas' legendary suicide by hanging parallels the crucifixion of his Lord, so the descents of Kamatha into one or another of the many subterranean Indian hells parallel the complementary ascents of his future savior into the
# Judas, indeed, is represented in a number of mcdicval legends as the elder brother of Jesus.
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