The Celestial Necklace

This Jain story is based on a version by Muni Mahendrakumar; it was originally written in Hindi. In the course of his study of the Agamas (Jain texts), the Muni discovered a large storehouse of short stories. These stories are simple, and their aim was to make Jain philosophy understandable to the common man. The stor~es were written, as the Muni says, "in different ages by men with widely divergent experience, but all against the backdrop of Jainism.// They were written to help "the fallen, the misguided, and the downtrodden along the right path."

Most Jain stories are interminable, and remind one of a Chinese box which, when opened, reveals another box, which in turn reveals another, and so on. The story in this AMAR CHITRA KATHA is one of such innumerable stories; the main one deals with King Munipati, a monk who was once a king. In the smaller stories, the thread is sometimes dropped once the moral is told. In the original text, our story ended with the retrieval of Queen Chellana's necklace from the ascetic's neck. But we have taken the liberty of completing the story in a manner which we hope is faithful to the original intention.