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JAINISM
up a howling cyclone. Trees splintered and hurtled through the air. The earth was rent, opening with a roar, and the high peaks fell, shattering to dust; a torrential rain descended. Yet the saint remained unmoved, serene, absolutely lost in his meditation. The god, exceedingly wrathful, became as hideous as he could: face black, mouth vomiting fire, and he was like the god of death, garlanded with a necklace of human heads. When he rushed at Pārśva, gleaming in the night, he fiercely shouted, "Kill! Kill!" but the saint never stirred.
The whole subterranean domain of the serpent supporting the earth began to tremble, and the great Dharaṇendra, “King of Earth," said to his consort, the goddess Padmavatī: "That compassionate Lord to whose sweet teachings at the time of our death we owe our present splendor is in danger." The two came up, made obeisance to the Lord, who remained unaware of the arrival, and stationing themselves at either side of him, lifting their prodigious forms, spread out their hoods, so that not a drop of the torrent touched his body. The apparitions were so large and terrifying that the god Samvara turned in his chariot and fled.18
Parsva then broke the fetters of his karma one by one, and became absorbed in the White Contemplation, by which even the last and slightest traces of the human desire for advantage
18 Or, according to another version: When the Lord Parsva placed himself beneath an aśoka tree, determined to gain enlightment, an asura named Meghamalin attacked him in the form of a lion, and then sent a storm of rain to drown him. But the serpent king Dharana wrapped his body around him and covered him with his hood. "Then the asura, seeing such great firmness in the Lord, was smitten in his mind with great astonishment and his pride was calmed. He made obeisance to the victorious one and went to his own place. Dharana also, seeing that the danger was gone, returned to his place" (Devendra's commentary to Uttaradhyavana Sutra 23. published and translated by Jarl Charpentier, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, LXIX, 1915, P. 356).
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