Dr. Kumarpal Desai
Sadhvi Madanrekha
Yugbahu was the younger brother of king Manirath of Sudarshanpur. His wife Madanrekha was extremely beautiful. Manirath was infatuated by Madanrekha’s beauty and by sending to her some precious ornaments, clothes and fragrant flowers he conveyed his desire for copulation with her. Madanrekha explicitly told him that it did not befit him to think of his younger brother’s wife thus. But Manirath’s infatuation became more and more intense. Infatuation of a lustful man destroys his sense of discretion. King Manirath decided to get Madanrekha by any means and he planned to kill his younger brother Yugbahu.
Once Yugbahu was fast asleep in the Kadaligruha near Vasantpur and all of a sudden Manirath came there and attacked him with a sword. On listening the screams of frightened Madanrekha, brave warriors arrived there and caught hold of the king Manirath. However Yugbahu was forbearing and asked his warriors not to kill his elder brother because whatever happened was the result of his previous birth. Thus Manirath escaped his death, but thinking that he had been successful in killing his brother, he was in a happy mood. Yet strange are the ways of fate and karma. While he was passing through the forest, the king Manirath had a snake-bite and he died.
While Yugbahu was breathing his last, his son Chandrayatha came there. Madanrekha chanted to her dying husband prayers. Listening to an inspiring and spiritual discourse Yugbahu passed away and ultimately took birth in the Brahmadevlok as a god. On the other hand, Madanrekha became extremely distressed as she felt that she had been the cause of her husband’s death, and suffered self-mortification. She preferred to stay in a lonesome place in a forest with concealed identity. There she gave birth to her second son. She put a ring, marked with Yugbahu’s name, on the young child’s finger and having placed the new-born child under a tree, in a jewel-studded blanket, she went for a bath in a pond.
Calamity never comes alone; they come in a battalion. While Madanrekha was having her bath in the pond, a water-elephant rolled her up in his trunk and waved her vigorously in the air. Vidyadhar who happened to pass through the sky protected her. Her saviour Vidyadhar, too, was also infatuated by her beauty. While as a mother Madanrekha was extremely anxious about her new-born child. Hence she requested Vidyadhar to bring the child to her or to take her to the place where the child was. She felt that her child would die crying in her absence. As Vidyadhar was infatuated by Madanrekha’s beauty, he asked her to accept him as a husband first of all and then he would do everything as per her desire.
Later, they both met muniraj Manchur while on a pilgrimage to Nandishvar Dwipa. His discourse made Vidyadhar accept her as his sister. When Madanrekha arrived at Mithila she came to know that king Chandrayatha of Sudarshanpur and King Namikumar of Mithila were engaged in a war. Having accepted initiation Madanrekha was known as Suvrata Sadhvi. She secured the permission of her guruni (female spiritual teacher) and went to the battle-field to prevent the large-scale destuction and loss resulting from a war.
The reason for the war was only this, that a white elephant that had escaped from king Namiraj was forcibly detained by king Chandrayatha. On the battle-field Madanrekha delivered a spiritual discourse and she led both the kings aside and told them details about their previous life and both of them embraced each other as they happened to be brothers. Instead of heavy destruction of a war, the battle field became a joyous meeting- place of two brothers.
