Part 7: Story of the dove and hawk

King Megharatha then entered the city Puṇḍarīkiṇī with his retinue from the garden Devaramaṇa. One day Megharatha, observing pauṣadha in the pauṣadha-house, began to explain the dharma taught by the Jinas to the wise. Just then a dove, trembling from fear, sad-eyed as if about to die, fell on his lap. The king said, “Do not fear, do not fear,” to the bird asking for safety in human speech. Thus addressed, the dove remained comfortably on the lap of the king, an ocean of compassion, like a child on his father’s lap. Saying, “This is my food. Turn him loose quickly, king,” a hawk came following him, like a garuḍa a snake. The king said to the hawk: “I will not hand him over to you. For it is not the ethics of warriors that one seeking protection should be given up. Furthermore, this is not fitting for you, intelligent: the preservation of your own life by the destruction of another’s. Just as you suffer pain if even a tail-feather is pulled out, just so does someone else, to say nothing of being killed. Your satisfaction from eating him will be only momentary; but the bird’s whole life will be destroyed. Creatures go to hell and endure unbearable pain from the killing of creatures with five senses and eating their flesh. How could a discriminating creature, even if hungry, kill a living creature to produce extreme pain on the one hand and pleasure for a moment on the other hand? Your hunger can be appeased by other food surely. The fire of bile which can be extinguished by sugar, can it not also be extinguished by milk?^[1] Pains arising in hell arrived at because of the murder of living creatures cannot be extinguished by any means except endurance. Then give up the killing of living creatures and practice one system of ethics by which you will undoubtedly attain happiness in birth after birth.”

The hawk replied to the king in human speech: “This dove came to you for protection from fear of me. I am suffering from hunger. To whom shall I go for protection? Tell me. For the great, rich in compassion, are favorable to all. Protect me also, O king, just as you protect him. The breath of me, suffering from hunger, is leaving. Consideration of right and wrong is for persons in comfort. Does not even a righteous person commit a crime when he is hungry? Enough of talk about ethics. This one that has become my food should be surrendered. What kind of ethics is it when one is protected and another killed? I would not be satisfied by other food, O king. I am an eater of quivering flesh of creatures recently killed by myself.”

The king said to him, “I will give you my own flesh, weighing it with the dove. Be satisfied. Do not die.”

The hawk said, “Very well,” and the king put the dove in the scales on one side and his own flesh on the other side, cutting it off again and again. As the king threw in his own flesh, as he continued to cut it off, so the dove kept increasing in weight. When the king saw that the dove kept increasing in weight, he himself got on the scales with unequaled courage. Seeing the king on the scales, all his retinue, crying, “Ha! Ha!” got on the scales of doubt. The vassals, ministers, et cetera, said to the king: “What have you, unfavorable to us, undertaken, lord? The whole world must be protected by that body. How can you abandon it for the protection of one mere bird? Moreover, he is some god or demon practising sorcery. There is no such weight of a mere bird.”

While they were saying this, a god with crown, earrings, and wreath, like a heap of splendor, appeared. The god said to the king: “You are unique among men; you are not to be shaken from humanity, like a house from its own site. The Indra of Īśāna described you in the council and I, not tolerating that, came to test you. I saw these two birds ready to fight because of enmity in a former birth and I superintended and arranged this. Pardon this.”

After telling this and restoring the king, the god went to heaven. The vassal-kings and others asked the king in astonishment: “What were the hawk and dove in a former birth and what is the cause of their enmity, and who was this god in a former birth?”

The king related: “There is a city Padminīkhaṇḍa, like a multitude of lotuses of Śrī, the ornament of Airavatakṣetra in Jambūdvīpa. Sāgaradatta lived there, resembling the ocean in wealth, and he had an irreproachable wife, Vijayasenā. They had two sons, Dhana and Nandana, and they reached youth, gradually growing up. The two of them passed the time, wandering about in various sports, arrogant from their father’s wealth.

One day they bowed to Sāgaradatta and said, ‘Father, command us to go to a foreign country to trade.’ Their father, pleased, gave them his permission immediately. For manliness on the part of the son is a delight of first rank to the father. Taking merchandise of many kinds, they set out with a caravan; and came in course of time to a large city, Nāgapura. Doing business there they obtained a certain choice jewel of great value, like two dogs one piece of food. They fought each other on the bank of the river Śaṅkha on account of the jewel, angered, like untamed bulls. While they were fighting, they fell into a deep pool of the river and died at once. Whose greed does not lead to death? After death the two brothers were born as these two birds and became enemies in this birth because of enmity in the former birth.

Furthermore, Stimitasāgara was king in the city Śubhā on the south bank of the Sītā in the province Ramaṇīyaka, the ornament of East Videha in this Jambūdvīpa and I was his son, Aparājita, in the fifth birth before this. Then I was Baladeva and my younger brother, Anantavīrya, was Vāsudeva. He is Dṛḍharatha now. At that time long-armed Damitāri was Prativiṣṇu and was killed by me in a fight about his daughter Kanakaśrī. After he had wandered in the forest of existence, he became the son of the ascetic Somaprabha on the bank of the river Nikṛti at the foot of Mt. Aṣṭāpada in Bharata in Jambūdvīpa. He practiced foolish penance and became a god, Surūpa. This god, intolerant of the praise bestowed on me by the Indra of Īśāna came and made this test of me.”

After they had heard this speech of the king, the hawk and dove, recalling their former births, at once fell to the ground in a swoon. They regained consciousness again, like persons rousing from sleep, from fanning and sprinkling made by the king’s servants. They said to the king in their own speech: “It is well that you have made us know that the crime of a former birth is the cause of such a birth,^[2] O master. Not only was a human-birth lost when we fought then over the jewel because we had become exceedingly greedy. Now a birth in hell was at hand, but we were headed off from that by you, like a blind man from a well, O master. Henceforth, protect, protect us from the wrong road, O master. Teach us the right road by which we may obtain an auspicious rank.”

The king, an ocean with waves of clairvoyant knowledge, knew their suitability and ordered a fast at the proper time. They observed the fast, died with pure thoughts, and were born as chief-gods among the Bhavanavāsins.

After he had completed pauṣadha, King Megharatha continued to protect the earth properly, like embodied law. One day as the king recalled the story of the dove and hawk, he attained extreme disgust with existence, the seed of the tree of tranquillity. He fasted for three days and remained in pratimā to endure attacks and trials, his body motionless as a mountain-peak. At that time the Indra of Īśāna, seated in the women’s apartments, said, “Reverence to you, Blessed One,” and bowed. His queens asked, “To whom, lord, was this reverence with extreme devotion shown by you who are entitled to reverence from the world?”

The Indra of Īśāna replied: “The son of Arhat Ghanaratha, King Megharatha by name, who has fasted for three days and is engaged in pure meditation, is standing in meditation in the city Puṇḍarīkiṇī, like a white lotus in a pool. He is a future Tīrthaṅkara, an ornament of Bharatakṣetra. When I, being here, saw him, I bowed to him. Troops of gods and demons, even with their Indras, cannot shake him, resolute, from that meditation, to say nothing of mortals, et cetera.”

Two queens of the Indra of Īśāna, Surūpā and Atirūpikā, could not endure the praise of the king and went to disturb him. They created young women, waves of the water of loveliness, like a living citadel or victorious weapon of Mīnalakṣman (Kāma). They undertook agreeable attacks (on him) by various manifestations, life-giving medicines of Smara. One displayed her shoulder, the abode of the root of love, under the pretext of binding her braid of hair falsely disarranged; another showed her hips, her garment half-fallen, that were like a mirror with its cover removed. One lifted her eyebrow repeatedly, like raising a weapon of Smara, pretending to talk with her women friends. One, impassioned, sang a composition of erotic episodes, charming with the gāndhāragrāma,^[3] rich with transformations of mouth and eye. A beautiful girl talked about the stories of the kāmaśāstra^[4] again and again, devoted to the topic of erotic sport experienced by herself. Another drew postures invented by passion, conforming with the humor of temperaments, the bilious humor,^[5] et cetera. One asked for talk; another for a touch of the hand; another for a favor of a glance; another for an embrace. So these fictitious goddesses practiced thus many kinds of the arts until dawn. Then the two queens dispersed these fictitious forms that had been useless against the king like blows of a chisel on adamant. Remorseful, the queens of Īśāna begged forgiveness of Megharatha, bowed to him, and went to their own abode.

The king, delighted, completed his pratimā and fast and, recalling again and again the events of the night, reached extreme desire for emancipation. When the chief-queen, Priyamitrā, saw her husband in such a condition, she also attained desire for emancipation. For good wives follow the path of the husband. Then one day Arhat Ghanaratha came there in his wandering and stopped (in a samavasaraṇa) in the north-east. Agents reported to the king the Master’s arrival. He gave them a gratuity and went with his younger brother to the Lord. The Lord delivered a sermon in a speech penetrating for a yojana, conforming to every dialect, with grāmarāgas. At the end of the sermon the king bowed to the Jina and said: “You are zealous in protecting everyone. Lord, protect me. You know everything. You are the benefactor of everyone, Lord of the World. Nevertheless, I make a request. Who is not eager for his own benefit, Master? Wait for me, Lord, until I have established the heir on the throne and come here to take initiation.”

“There must be no negligence.” So instructed by the Arhat himself, Megharatha went home and said to his younger brother, “Take the burden of the earth, son, that I may become a mendicant. I am wearied from this wandering in existence, like a traveler.” Then Dṛḍharatha said, his hands folded submissively: “Truly this saṃsāra, which is painful, must be abandoned by the discerning. But why do you desert me, lord, in this saṃsāra being such, hard to cross like a boundless ocean, by imposing the burden of the earth on me? Until today you have considered me like yourself. Why do you make a distinction now? Be gracious, lord. Save me also, as well as yourself. Today I shall become a mendicant with you at our father’s feet. Give the earth to someone else, master.”

Then Megharatha gave the kingdom to his own son, Meghasena, and the rank of heir-apparent to Rathasena, Dṛḍharatha’s son. When the departure-festival had been held by Meghasena, King Megharatha went to the Blessed One with Dṛḍharatha, seven hundred of his sons, and four thousand kings, and undertook abstention from all censurable activities. Enduring trials and attacks very hard to endure, having the three controls, the five kinds of carefulness, free from desire even in the body, engaged in manifold vows and penance, accompanied by Dṛḍharatha, knowing eleven Aṅgas, he wandered over the earth.

By means of the twenty pure sthānakas, devotion to the Arhat, et cetera, he acquired the name- and family-karma of an Arhat, hard to acquire.

After he had practiced the severe penance called siṃhaniḥkrīḍita^[6] and had preserved his asceticism unbroken for a lac of pūrvas, the noble muni Megharatha, firm as a mountain, ascended Mt. Amaratilaka and observed a fast according to rules.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Bile is appeased by the bitter, astringent and sweet tastes. Milk and sugar both belong to the madhura (sweet) group. Sushruta-Samhita, I, 383, 390.

[2]:

An animal-birth.

[3]:

See I, n. 79.

[4]:

Ars amatoria.

[5]:

Its quality is heat.

[6]:

See II, n. 51.