जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
The conquest of the six khaṇḍas

The digvijaya

दिग्विजय

Bharata's march round all of Bharat behind the cakra — sixty thousand years out and back, and every one of the fourteen ratnas used on the way.

The cakra arose in the armoury at Vinītā and rolled east. Bharata followed it "like light behind a torch", a yojana a day, to the three tīrthas of the eastern, southern and western seas — Māgadha, Varadāma, Prabhāsa — where an arrow shot twelve yojana into the sea brought each lord out to submit.

Then up the Sindhu to Vaitāḍhya, where the general crossed the river on the hide and took the outer khaṇḍa; through Tamisrā by the light of the maṇi and the forty-nine circles of the kākiṇī; seven days under the parasol while the Meghamukha nāgas rained; an arrow of seventy-two yojana to the prince of Himavat; his name on Ṛṣabhakūṭa; twelve years' war with the Vidyādharas Nami and Vinami, which ended with Subhadrā; a thousand years with the goddess of the Gaṅgā; back through Khaṇḍaprapātā; the nine nidhis rising at the Gaṅgā's mouth; and home by the east gate.

The text walks five of the six khaṇḍas by name. Whether the general separately took the northern Sindhu khaṇḍa is not in the passages this atlas could read, and the map does not draw a stop the text does not give.

Sixty thousand years after the first march he was consecrated by thirty-two thousand kings, and the festival ran twelve years. Every serious cakravartī story ends the same way; his ended in a hall of mirrors.

Measurements and counts

Duration60,000 years
Daily march1 yojana
Camp9 × 12 yojana
Arrow12 yojana; 72 at Himavat
War with the Vidyādharas12 years
With Gaṅgā-devī1,000 years
Coronation festival12 years
Kings at the coronation32,000
Khaṇḍas walked in the text5 of 6

Connected

Open in the interactive atlas →

समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10