Part 8: Pārśva’s initiation

Now Pārśva, the Blessed One, knew that the fruit of his own pleasure-karma had been consumed and set his mind on mendicancy. As if knowing his intentions, the Lokāntika gods came at that time and announced to Pārśva, “Lord, found a congregation.” Then the Master began to give gifts for a year with money furnished by the Jṛmbhakas instructed by Vaiśravaṇa. The initiation-ceremony of Pārśva, the Supreme Lord, was held by the Vāsavas, Śakra and others, and by the kings, Aśvasena and others. He got into a litter, Viśālā by name, carried by gods and mortals and went to the garden Āśramapada. The Blessed One, son of Aśvasena entered the garden whose surface was darkened by the dense masses of marjoram; which was making an invocation to Love, as it were, by the bees of the jasmines; with swarms of bees kissing the multitude of mucukundas;^[1] fragrant from the pollen of the lavalī^[2] floating in the air; with singing gardeners seated on the edge of sugar-cane fields.

The Lord Pārśva, wearing (deva-)dūṣya given by Vāsava, got out of the palanquin, and laid aside ornaments, et cetera,^[3] thirty years old. On the forenoon on the thirteenth of the dark half of Pauṣa, the moon being in Rādhā, observing a three-day fast, the Master became a mendicant with three hundred kings. At that time the Lord’s knowledge called “mind-reading” arose. For it arises at the initiation of all the Arhats.

On the next day the Lord broke his fast in a hamlet, Kopakaṭa, with a milk-pudding in the house of the householder Dhanya. The gods made there the five things, rain of treasure, et cetera.^[4] But Dhanya made a footstool on the ground of the Master’s feet.^[5] Unhindered like the wind, the Lord wandered in villages, mines, cities, et cetera, an ordinary ascetic, his gaze fixed six feet ahead. One day in his wandering the Master came to a hermitage near a town and the sun set. The Teacher of the World stood in pratimā under a banyan tree near a well, motionless as its foot.