Part 3: Rejoicing at the Arhat’s conception

Then Indra’s (Śakra’s) lion-throne shook, and he employed clairvoyant-knowledge, an eye more powerful than a thousand eyes. By clairvoyant knowledge he knew a Tīrthakṛt had been conceived and, his body horripilated, Vāsava thought:

“Now the Supreme Lord has fallen from the Anuttara-palace, Vijaya, a cause of rejoicing for the world. Now he has descended into the womb of Queen Vijayā, the wife of King Jitaśatru, in the great city Vinītā in the middle division of the southern half of Bhāratavarṣa in the best continent named Jambūdvīpa. He will be the second blessed Tīrthanātha in this avasarpiṇī, an ocean with the water of compassion.”

With these reflections Sunāsīras hurriedly abandoned his lion-throne, foot-stool, and shoes. Taking seven or eight steps, his face upturned in the direction of the Tīrthakṛt, his upper garment placed in folds over his mouth,^[1] placing his right knee on the ground and bending his left a little, he bowed, the surface of the ground touched by his head and hands. Śakra paid homage accompanied by the Śakrastava^[2] to the Jina and went to Vinītā to the house of King Jitaśatru.

Knowing the descent of the Arhat from the shaking of their thrones at that time, the other Indras also came there with devotion. Śakra and the other Indras also, devoted to the blessed lady, came to the splendid sleeping-house of the mistress, Queen Vijayā. It had a courtyard with svastikas inlaid with priceless collections of pearls, big as the fruit of the myrobalan,^[3] potless, smooth, and round; it had arches made at the doors with golden pillars decorated with puppets of sapphire and with leaves of emerald; and a canopy of whole divine cloths of fine threads, five-colored, resembling the sky with twilight-clouds, arranged on all sides; adorned with columns of smoke rising from golden incense-machines, like raised clubs of a harem-guard.

They saw the mistress on a beautiful conch which was a little high on the sides and a little depressed in the middle, with pillows filled with down from a haṃsa’s breast and spread with white covers, like a female haṃsa on a sandy beach of the Gaṅgā. They announced themselves, bowed, and explained to Vijayā that the fruit of the dreams took the form of a Tīrthaṅkara’s birth. Then Śakra instructed Dhanada (Kubera): “You filled this city with jewels, etc., at the beginning of the reign of Ṛṣabha Svāmin. Renew this city by new houses, etc., like a garden in the month of Madhu with new shoots. Fill the city completely with jewels, gold, money, grain, garments, etc., like a cloud the earth with water.”

After giving these instructions, he and the other Indras went to Nandīśvara and held an eight-day festival to the eternal statues of the Arhats. Then all the Vāsavas went to their respective abodes. Yakṣa (Kubera) performed Indra’s command and went from that city to his own city.

Filled by the Lord of Alakā (Kubera) with lofty heaps of gold like the peaks of Mt. Meru, with lofty piles of silver like the peaks of Vaitāḍhya, with piles of jewels like the wealth of the ocean, with seventeen kinds of grain like seeds of the joy of the world, with garments on all sides as if they had been taken from the kalpa-trees, with very beautiful chariots and draft-animals like those of the Jyotiṣkas; renewed in every house, in every market and cross-roads, the city looked like Alakā.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Uttarāsaṅga, defined in PE, s.v., as ‘wrapping the scarf around face’ (illustrated in PE, I, p. 349), and this seems to be generally accepted. But in KSK 15, p. 27b, it is interpreted only as ‘vaikakṣam.’

[2]:

See I, n. 166.

[3]:

It varies from ½ to 1½ in. in diameter.