Page:The Heart of Jainism (IA heartofjainism00stevuoft).djvu/109

 them disguised to study Buddhist doctrines in order to refute them on their return. The Buddhist monks, however, were suspicious of the orthodoxy of these new inquirers and drew images of the Tīrthaṅkara on the steps of their monastery to see if they would tread on them. But the two Jaina boys neatly turned the tables by adding the sacred thread ^1 to the sketches and so making them representations of Buddha; this done, they trod on them happily enough. Enraged at this insult to their great leader, the Buddhist monks slew the lads. Haribhadra, maddened at their loss, determined to slay all the monks, some 1,444, in boiling oil by means of his occult powers, but was stopped in time by his guru. ^2 He repented deeply of his hasty resolve, and to expiate it he wrote no less than 1,444 books on various subjects, some of which remain to this day.

Siddhasūri ^3 was the next great head of the community; he was the grandson of a Prime Minister of Śrīmāla (once the capital of Gujarāt) and the cousin of the famous Sanskrit poet Māgha. Siddhasūri's conversion happened on this wise. After his marriage he became a great gambler, and his wife grieved sorely over his absences from home. One night she was sitting up as usual waiting for his return, when her mother-in-law, seeing her weeping, asked her to go to sleep and said she would sit up for her son. When Siddhasūri returned long after midnight, his mother refused to open the door and told him to go and spend the night anywhere he could gain a welcome, for there was no admittance for him there. Deeply hurt, he sought entrance at the only open door he could find, which happened to be that of a Jaina Apāsaro.^4 The sādhus were all sitting on the floor,

^1 The Jaina never wear the sacred thread as the Buddhists do. The Brāhmans of course always wear it from their eighth year.

^2 Bhandarkar gives a different account in his Search after Jaina MSS ., 1883, p. 141, where it is said that Haribhadra actually killed the monks. This the Jaina indignantly deny.

'3 His date is variously given as 536 and 539.

^4 The name given to a Jaina meeting-house and monks' lodging.