Part 5: Death of Śreṇīka

When Abhaya took initiation at the lotus-feet of Śrī Vīra, the pure-minded King of Magadha reflected: “Abhaya, among the princes, was the ground of all the virtues. By taking the vow, he wisely accomplished his own object. I shall bestow the kingdom on some prince, powerful, healthy, handsome. For that is the course of kings. A son, with or without virtues, is entitled to his father’s wealth. If he has virtues, then the father's merit is splendid. Apart from Abhayakumāra, Kūṇika, the abode of contentment of my mind, virtuous, deserves the kingdom, no other.” Having decided on Kūṇika for the throne, he gave the necklace with eighteen strands and the elephant Secanaka to Halla and Vihalla.

In the meantime Prince Kūṇika planned with ten brothers like himself, Kāla and the others: “Our father is old, he takes no delight in sovereignty. When a son of a king has reached military age, he (the king) is entitled to take the vow. Better, very excellent Abhaya, who gave up his wealth though young, than our father, blind from sense-objects, who docs not perceive his own old age. So now, after arresting our father, we will take the kingdom suitable for our age. In this there will be no evil talk. For he is devoid of discernment. After doing that, we brothers will enjoy the kingdom in eleven parts. Let our father, imprisoned, live a hundred years.”

Accordingly, they all, evil-minded, imprisoned their trusting father. Evil offspring are like a poison-tree that has appeared in the house. Kūṇika then threw Śreṇika into a cage, like a parrot. But this is the difference; he did not even give him food and drink. Because of his former hatred, evil Kūṇika gave his father a hundred lashes with a whip, morning and evening, every day. Śreṇika endured this evil lot wrought by fate. What can an elephant, even if strong, do, if tied by a rope?

Kūṇika did not permit any one to go near Śreṇika; only he did not prevent Celaṇā from courtesy to his mother. Celaṇā, her hair wet with a hundred washings in wine, like one who had just bathed, went to Śreṇika daily. Inside her hair, Celaṇā put a ball of kulmāṣa like a wreath of flowers and, devoted to her husband, took it to him. Celaṇā gave the hidden ball of kulmāṣa to her husband. When he had obtained it hard to obtain, he thought it equal to divine food. Śreṇika maintained life by the ball of food. For disease, characterized by a desire to eat, without food leads to death. Celaṇā, devoted to her husband, made drops of wine from the hundred washings fall from her mass of hair together with tear-drops from her eyes. Śreṇika drinks the falling drops of wine, like a thirsty cātaka^[1] the drops of rain-water fallen from a cloud. By means of this wine drunk only in drops, Śreṇika did not feel the beatings and did not suffer from thirst.

While Kūṇika was haughtily exercising sovereignty after imprisoning Śreṇika, his wife Padṃāvatī bore a son. Kūṇika made the slave-girls, nurses who had come at that time, covered with clothes and ornaments like shoots of a wishing tree. He himself went to the harem and took the boy with his hands; and the baby, resting on his lotus-hands, looked like a young haṃsa. Looking at his son, the sun to his lotus-eyes, Kūṇika recited a verse, with extreme delight unrestrained: “You were produced from body and body; you were born from the heart. You have become like myself, son. Live for a hundred years.” Reciting this again and again, Kūṇika never tired, as if pouring forth the joy in his heart in the guise of this verse. The baby was laid on the lying-in couch by old women skilled in the care of children, who took it from the king’s hand. The king held a great birth-ceremony festival for his son, giving gifts, whatever they wanted, to petitioners, Brāhmans and others. Kūṇika named his son Udāyin, with a very fine festival making the day an auspicious day. Prince Udāyin, gold color, grew day by day, surrounded by guards, like a tree in a forest. With the boy held on his hip constantly, the king assumed the beauty of a pillar with a doll of Śāl-wood. Caressing the boy with speech with indistinct whispers, the king heaped wealth on the boy unable to speak. While sitting, lying, walking, eating, the king did not let the baby, like an auspicious position of the fingers, go from his hand.

One day the king, Śreṇika’s son, sat down to eat and, devoted to his son, set Udāyin on his left knee. When Kūṇika had eaten half his food, the baby made water and the stream, like a stream of ghī, fell on the food. “May there be no interruption of my son’s stream,” the king, Śreṇika’s son, did not move his knee. Such is the affection for a son. Picking up in his hand the food that was wet, he ate it just so. This was a pleasure from love for his son. Kūṇika asked Celaṇā who was sitting there, “Mother, was there or is there a son dearer to any one?” Celaṇā said: “Villain, wretched man, disgrace to the family, do you not know that you were exceedingly dear to your father? I knew then by an evil pregnancy-whim that you were an enemy of your father. For the pregnancy-whims of pregnant women are like the embryo. Knowing that you, wretch, still an embryo were your father’s enemy, I undertook an abortion from desire for my husband's welfare. Nevertheless, you were not destroyed by these various abortion-remedies, but on the contrary you flourished. Everything is wholesome for the very strong. Such a wish of mine was fulfilled frequently by your father with the hope, ‘When shall I see the face of my son?’ ‘He is an enemy of his father,’ I exposed you when you were born, but your father brought you back carefully like his own life. At that time a finger of yours had been pierced by a tail-feather of a wild hen and had become exceedingly disgusting, filled with pus from worms. Your father put your finger, even such as it was, in his mouth. So long as your finger was in his mouth, you were comfortable. So you were cherished by the father, you ill-mannered wretch, whom you have thrown into prison as a return.”

Kūṇika said, “Why did father send me molasses-sweetmeats and sugar-sweetmeats to Halla and Vihalla?”

Celaṇā said, “You were displeasing to me because you were an enemy to your father. I alone had the molasses-sweetmeats given to you, simpleton.”

Kūṇika said: “Shame, shame on me, acting without reflecting. I shall restore the kingdom to father, as if it had been given on deposit.”

With these words, he sipped water,^[2] though the meal was half-eaten, and handed the boy to a nurse. Kūṇika got up, eager to go to his father. Thinking, “I shall break the chains on father’s feet,” he took an iron staff and ran to Śreṇika. The guards assigned to Śreṇika, former attendants, saw Kūṇika coming and, confused, said: “Your son comes quickly, carrying an iron staff, like Yama in person. We do not know what he will do.” Śreṇika thought: “Certainly he intends to kill me. Other times he came, carrying a whip; now he comes, carrying a staff. I do not know. He will kill me by some evil death. So, death is a refuge for me before he has come.” With this idea, Śreṇika put poison in the hollow of the palate on the tip of his tongue and his life departed quickly, as if it had been at the starting-point in front.^[3]

When Kūṇika came and saw his father lifeless before him, beating his breast, he screamed. He moaned: “Oh! Honored father, by such deeds I became a scoundrel without an equal on earth. Since my wish, ‘I shall beg forgiveness from my honored father,’ was not fulfilled, I am now again the most wicked. There were favorable speech and abusive speech. I did not hear yours. An evil fate intervened. By jumping off a precipice, by a sword, fire, or water, I shall kill myself. For that is suitable to my deeds.”

Consumed by the disease of grief, wishing to die, Kūṇika, enlightened by the ministers, cremated Śreṇika’s body. The ministers saw the king wasting away day by day from excessive grief, as if from tuberculosis, and thought: “The king will certainly die from grief and the kingdom will perish. We must contrive some distraction for him under pretext of devotion to his father.” They themselves engraved on an old copper-plate the words, “Even though dead, a father accepts oblations, et cetera, given by a son.” They had that read before the king and the king himself, deceived by them, gave oblations to his father. From that time began the giving of oblations. “Father, though dead, eats what I give him,” the simple-minded king thought and gradually gave up grieving, like a man with fever the change in body-fluids. But again and again grief came to Kūṇika, according to the axiom of a lion’s backward look, when he saw his father’s couch, seat, et cetera. Sorrow blooming again and again, like the stem of the moonseed, the king became entirely unable to stay in Rājagṛha.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Cucculus melanoleucus, It lives on raindrops, traditionally.

[2]:

Hindus sip water at the end of a meal.

[3]:

Kūṇika is usually credited with the murder of Śreṇika.