The Wedding He Would Not Hold

The episode Jains cherish above all in Neminatha's life is his renunciation on the very day of his wedding. He was to marry Rajimati (Rajul), daughter of King Ugrasena, and the marriage procession had set out when he heard the cries of animals penned nearby, creatures gathered to be slaughtered for the wedding feast. Unwilling to be, even indirectly, the cause of their death, he turned the procession back, released the animals, and renounced the world rather than hold the marriage.

The story is the tradition's paradigm of ahimsa, non-violence carried to the point of surrendering one's own union and household for the sake of lives that would otherwise be taken in celebration of it. Rajimati, in the account, was not abandoned to grief but followed him onto the path, herself renouncing the world and entering the ascetic order, so that the tale is remembered as one of shared renunciation rather than of a bride forsaken.