King Shrenik was married to Rani Chelna. He followed Buddhism while she was a firm Jain.
Rani Chelna was the aunt(mausi) of Mahavira. At the time of marriage, she was
deceived by prince Abhaaykumar who was the son of king Shrenik from another queen.
After marriage, she got to know that king Shrenik was not a follower of Jainism. She started crying so king asked him the reason. After a long discussion, king Shrenik gave her the permission to follow whatever she wants.
She started following and promoting Jainism fearlessly. The effect of Jainism could be seen in the whole town. Some Buddhist teachers got to know this and feared what if she made the whole town Jain.
They went to the king and asked him to instruct the queen to follow Buddhism otherwise she will diminish Buddhism from the town. The king said that he couldn’t do anything so the teachers should go and coax Chelna to follow Buddhism.
The teachers said to Chelna that she will have to tolerate pain in the upcoming births if she continued worshipping Jain Saints. To this Chelna asked them how they know this. They replied that they are Sarvagya(the one who knew each and everything of this world.). Chelna said if you are Sarvagya then I will accept your religion after giving you food. They accepted the offer and thought she will definitely leave Jainism now.
The next day when the queen called the teachers to have food, they became very happy and ate the food describing the good characteristics of queen Chelna.
While they were eating food Chelna prepared buttermilk with the pieces of the left footwear of the teachers. The teachers were so engrossed in having the delicious food that they thought the pieces are some new salty food and drank the buttermilk quickly.
The teachers asked the queen to accept Buddhism because the feast was over now. She told them not to worry and she will take the oath to follow Buddhism at their place.
The teacher after satisfaction went to the door but they could not find their left footwear. They tried looking for the footwear here and there. Then, they went to the queen and asked her about the footwear. To this, she replied that you are Sarvagya so you should know where your footwear is.
After that, the Buddhist teacher could not say anything and requested her to tell. She told them that they have eaten it just now. They vomited in anger and saw the pieces of footwear. They left the place aggressively.
After some days, king Shrenik went for hunting in the forest. There he saw a Jain Muni. He remembered how queen Chelna insulted his gurus. So, he tried attacking Saint Yashodhar with dogs but the dogs circumbulated the saint and sat there. After this, the king was going to kill the muni with his sword but he saw a snake and killed it. He rounded the neck of muniraj with the dead snake.
On the fourth day of this incident, king Shrenik reached his palace back. He told the whole incident to Chelna laughing. Chelna was in tears after hearing about the Upsarg on muniraj Yashodhar. King Shrenik asked her to stop crying and said, “he would have gone till now. Removing snake is not a big task.”.
Chelna replied, “if he is a real Jain Saint, he would not have moved even an inch from the place.”
Then, Chelna and Shrenik started going back to the place where Yashodhar muniraj was engrossed in his meditation. On reaching the place, they saw muniraj standing in the same posture and ants crawling on his whole body. Chelna quickly removed the snake and placed some sugar so that ants get attracted to sugar and leave the body of muniraj. It was night so muniraj didn’t speak anything.
In the morning, king and queen worshipped the saint. Muniraj Yashodar gave the same blessings to both. King Shrenik was surprised to see this. He thought, “Even though I have done so wrong to muniraj, he gave the same blessings to me. How great Jain Saints are!”.
King Shrenik accepted Jainism and started following Jainism from that day. A few days later, he attained samyakdarshan and did bandh of Tirthankara Prakriti in the samosaran of Lord Mahavira.
