ABSTRACT
The accounts of the activities of Ratnaprabha S¨ri contain motifs common to other conversion stories. According to the chronicle, he both restored to life the son of a prominent brahman who had been bitten by a snake, thus creating the climate for other inhabitants of Osiån to convert, and confirmed his power by his conquest of the town’s tutelary goddess Saccikå who was compelled to abandon her carnivorous habits and become a Jain vegetarian deity. The sanctity of Osiån was further guaranteed by the miraculous discovery of a buried image of Mahåv⁄ra which was installed in a temple. The chronicle also describes how the attempt to remove the prominent nipples of this image, which brought about a miraculous flow of blood, led to Saccikå predicting the eventual loss of Osiån’s prosperity and the scattering of the Osvål caste.92
