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RIŞABHA DEVA
ly. Death had itself received a death-blow fronı His hand ; and starvation could only release Him for ever from the tyranny of the flesh, if it could destroy His body!
Fearless, self-centred, self-controlled, the WORLD TEACHER moved about for a long period of time, engaged in holy meditation. He performed the severest austerities and tapascharaṇa, to eradicate his karmas and thereby to separate His Soul from matter. According to tradition. He spent altogether 999* years 11 months and 2 days in performing the karma-destroying austerities. At last His tapascharana. bore the desired fruit ; on the eleventh of the first, that is to say, the dark, half of the month of Phālaguna in the Ultarāsādha Nakshatra (constellation)
* Great longerity seems to have been associated with huge stature of humanity in the remote past. The following item of news recently published in the (Indian) Statesman in its issue of the 16th October, 1929 is not unlikely to prove interesting, on fuller investigation, in regard to the alleged fabulous ages and heights attained by men in the remotest past: “ It is claimed that a highly important anthropological discovery has been made on the Limpopo by an Italian scientific expedition which has arrived at Bulvayo. This discovery consists of an imprint in stone of an enormous human foot, indicating a type of prehistoric man of which no trace has hitherto been found. Professor Cipriani, of Florence University, who was in charge of the expedition, is convinced that the foot-print dates back hundreds of thousands of years, and is undoubtedly the most primitive in existence."
