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LIFE OF SHRI VASUPUJYASWAMI
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King
Padmottar ruled over Mangalavati town of Ardhapushkar Island.
He was a person devoted to spiritual pursuits.
In later of his life he took Diksha from Acharya Vajranabh.
Reducing the garnishment of Karma by penance and spiritual
practices he earned the Tirthankar-nam-and-gotra-karma and incarnated as
a god in the Pranat dimension. Vasupujya
was the king of Champa town in the Bharat sub-continent.
His queen was Jaya Devi. Besides
being a great warrior King Vasupujya was a compassionate and charitable
person. The queen too was
benevolent and she inspired the king in his charitable activities. The
being that was Padmottar was born to queen Jaya Devi. It is said that when the queen was pregnant, the king of gods
came to convey his veneration to the future Tirthankar and his mother.
As Indra is also known as Vasu, the newborn was named Vasupujya
(venerated by Vasu). As
Vasupujya grew, so grew his inherent detachment and apathy for mundane
affairs. He had not
attraction for the regal splendor and grandeur.
When he became a young his parents wanted him to marry but he
declined. He even conveyed
that he had no intention of ascending the worldly life and became a
Shraman on the fifteenth day of the dark half of the month of Phalgun
alongwith six hundred other persons. The
intensity of his spiritual practices was so deep that he became an
omniscient within one month. At
that moment he was practicing under a patal tree in a garden outside
Champa town. He established
the four pronged religious ford and preached for a long period. The
second Vasudev, Dwiprishtha, was his devotee.
He and his brother Baldev Shrivijay conquered Prativasudev Tarak
and brought his oppressive rule to an end.
Shrivijay later joined the ascetic order of Bhagavan Vasupujya. Bhagavan
Vasupujya got Nirvana in Champa town on the fourteenth day of the bright
half of the month of Ashadh. |