Part 1: Incarnation as Padmottara

There is a city, Ratnasañcayā, in the province Maṅgalāvatī, which is the ornament of East Videha in the (inhabited) half of Puṣkaravaradvīpa. Its king was named Padmottara, always superior with a wealth^[1] of everything, dear to the people as the moon.^[2] He carried in mind the pure teaching of the Jinas, as kings carried his own commands on their heads with devotion. Of him, the sole abode of merit, the wealth and fame increased very much simultaneously, as if they were born twins. He, the crest-jewel of kings, ruled the earth surrounded by the ocean, like a city girdled by a moat. Always considering that “Fortune is a fickle wanton; beauty is fleeting as youth; meritorious acts are transitory as a drop of water on the tip of a lotus-petal;^[3] even brothers are strangers like travelers who have met on the road,” he attained disgust with existence.

One day he, noble-minded, went to the feet of the guru Vajranābha and took initiation, the messenger of the advent of the Śrī of emancipation. He, wise, acquired the body-making karma of a Tīrthaṅkara by means of some of the pure sthānakas,^[4] devotion to the Arhats, et cetera. For a long time he kept his vow sharper than the blade of a sword and at death he became a powerful god in the heaven Prāṇata.