Trishashti Shalaka Purusha Caritra

by Helen M. Johnson | 1931 | 742,503 words

This page describes Personal description of of Ajita and Sagara which is the third part of chapter III of the English translation of the Ajitanatha-caritra, contained within the “Trishashti Shalaka Purusha Caritra”: a massive Jain narrative relgious text composed by Hemacandra in the 12th century. Ajitanatha in jainism is the second Tirthankara (Jina) and one of the 63 illustrious beings or worthy persons.

Part 3: Personal description of of Ajita and Sagara

Adorned with entirely symmetrical bodies[1] and with joints called ‘double-mortise-collar and pin,’[2] gold-color, four hundred and fifty bows tall, their breasts, marked with the śrīvatsa, wearing shining fillets, they attained youth characterized by beauty of the body, like the sun and moon with rays of a high degree of beauty, autumn. They shone with hair dark and wavy like full brothers of the Yamunā’s waves, and with foreheads like brothers of the moon of the eighth day. Their cheeks were like golden mirrors, and their eyes tender and soft like petals of the blue lotus. Their noses looked like bridges between the pools of their eyes, and their lips like twin fruit of the bimba.[3] Their ears with beautiful whorls looked like pearl-oysters, and their necks, purified by three lines, like conchs. Their shoulders were arched like the frontal boss of an elephant, and their arms were long and fleshy like the king of serpents. Their breasts resembled slabs of Svarṇaśaila, and their navels were very deep like the mind. Their waists were slender as the middle part of a thunderbolt; their thighs, straight and soft, had the shape of an elephant’s trunk. Their legs were like the legs of a deer; and their feet had straight toes like the petals of the sthalapadma.[4] Charming naturally and especially so because of youth, they were dear to young women, like gardens because of spring. Sagara surpassed all mortals in beauty and also in good qualities, strength, etc., just as Vāsava surpassed all gods. Lord Ajita, on the other hand, excelled to a high degree all the Kalpadevas and all the inhabitants of the Graiveyaka- and Anuttara-heavens, and even an āhāraka-body[5] in beauty, just as Mt. Meru surpasses all mountains in size.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See I, n. 133.

[2]:

See 1, n. 133.

[3]:

See I, n. 80.

[4]:

Hibiscus Mutabilis, a species of mallow.

[5]:

See I, n. 157.

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