Part 3: Birth of Candraprabha

Now, King Padma’s jīva, which was living in Vaijayanta, completed a life of thirty-three sāgaras. It fell and descended into the womb of Queen Lakṣmaṇā, when the moon was in conjunction with Anurādhā, on the fifth day of the black half of Caitra. At that time Queen Lakṣmaṇā, comfortably asleep, saw the fourteen great dreams indicating the birth of a Tīrthakṛt. Queen Lakṣmaṇā carried comfortably the embryo unobserved, like the earth the shining wealth of jewels. On the twelfth day of the black half of Pauṣa, the moon standing in Anurādhā, she bore her jewel of a son, marked with a moon, the color of the moon.

Then, knowing the birth of the eighth Arhat by the shaking of their thrones, the fifty-six Dikkumārīs performed the birth-rites. The Indra of Saudharma joyfully made the festival of the birth-bath. Attended by gods, he took the Master to the peak of Meru. Hari seated himself on the jeweled throne on the rock Atipāṇḍukambalā, holding the Supreme Lord on his lap. Then the sixty-three Indras, Acyuta, etc., radiantly joyful, bathed the Master in turn. Next, Śakra set the Master on the couch of the lap of the Indra of Īśāna, and bathed him with water rising out of the horns of bulls.

After he had paid homage to him devotedly with divine unguent, ornaments, and garments, Pākaśāsana began a hymn of praise to the Blessed One.

Stuti:

“I, undertaking to praise you whose virtues are infinite, am the abode of ridicule, like a ṭiṭṭibha with its legs extended upwards with the idea that it is the support of the sky.^[1] However, I am able to praise you because I have increasing wisdom from your power. Even a small cloud fills the heavens by union with the east wind. You, O Lord, just from being seen or thought of by a man, are an unprecedented weapon for the destruction of the mass of karma. Today, surely there is an uprising of good karma in the world, since yon destroy the ignorance of all, like the sun destroying darkness of day-blooming lotuses. Impurity will melt away from me without even taking its fruit, like the blossom of the śephālikā struck by moonlight.^[2] By that embodiment (of yours), O Blessed One, you take away pain from creatures, to say nothing of your figure engaged in mendicancy which bestows fearlessness on all. O Lord, you have come here to destroy karma, the root of existence, like a rutting elephant to a forest to root up trees. Just as ornaments, ropes of pearls, etc., are on the outside of my heart, so may you be inside my heart, O Lord of the Three Worlds.”

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The ṭiṭṭibha is a sand-piper. MW and Bate both give Parra jacuna for ṭiṭṭibha, but Śabda. gives it as a synonym of ṭiṭiharī, the sand-piper (Tringa goensis, Bate). This bird is said “to sleep with its legs extended upwards, as if to sustain the firmament; hence the phrase is applied to a person who undertakes an enterprise far above bis capacities.” Bate, s. v. ṭaṭoharā. Hindī proverb: Ṭaṭohare se āsmān thāmā jāegā: Will the sky be supported by the sand-piper?

[2]:

Śephālikā, the Nyctanthes arbor tristis, the night-flowering jasmine. Dutt, p. 189, says its flowers “open at sunset, and before morning strew the ground thickly with their fallen corollas.”