Part 6: Initiation of Ara

When the same amount of time had passed with the Master as cakrin, he was told by the Lokāntikas, “Found a congregation.” After giving gifts for a year, he gave the kingdom to his son Aravinda and went to Sahasrāmravaṇa in the palanquin Vaijayantī. The Jina, whose mark is a nandyāvarta, entered the garden whose trees were occupied by cuckoos as silent as monks vowed to silence; whose travelers were halted by the songs of milk-maids in the purple cane-plantation;^[1] made into a refuge by peacocks whose tails had been shed, as if ashamed at the sight of the wealth of hair of the sporting women from the city; with bees excited by the fragrance of the blossoms of the punnāga; the sky made tawny by the fruit of the jujube^[2] and orange; adorned on all sides with the opening buds on the tips of the lavalī, phalinī, jasmine, mucukunda, like smiles of the winter season, with the face of the sky darkened by the pollen of the lodh flowers. After descending from Vaijayantī, on the eleventh day in the bright halt of Mārga, the moon being in Pauṣṇa, in the last division of the day, the Lord became a mendicant together with a thousand kings, observing a two-day fast; and at that same time mind-reading knowledge arose. On the next day the Master broke his fast with rice-pudding at the house of King Aparājita in the city Rājapura. The five things, the stream of treasure, et cetera, were made by the gods and a jeweled platform was made by the king over the Master’s footprints.