Footprints Forever

This story is of the King of Ujjain - Malwa 👑King VikramAditya. 

What did he do that people named Samvat for him ?

Leaving his Footprints Forever👣

In the ancient city of Ujjain ruled a king named Vikramaditya. This story is the legend of the king under whose name we in Bharat celebrate new calendar year. 

Vikram Samvat is also the official calendar of Nepal.

Artist, craftsman, traders, merchants flourished under the reign of this king.

It is said that no one would go empty handed or without his items being sold in Ujjain. Trade and commerce flourished here. It was said that by any chance you are unable to sell your goods in Ujjain then the King himself would purchase the goods. That was the benchmark established during the reign of this king. 

People of the day had trust in the economy and faith in the governance established by ministers and the king. King Vikramaditya was in consultation and guidance of Jain Acharya Siddhsen Divakarsuri for the betterment of the people of his country.

One day the King VikramAditya asked the Jainacharya Siddhsen Divakarsuri about what more could be done for the people's welfare that could bring happiness and joy among his pupil common people.

Jainacharya Siddhsen Divakarsuri told him if you really want to create an impact very positive impact then you should make the common people free from the debts.

Thinking about this proposition King Vikramaditya started the consultation with the ministers of his darbar.

Then an announcement was made in the kingdom. All the people who has any debt to be paid list them all and share to the royal court.

People were given timelines to share their books of accounts where they had their debt from any or all the debt collectors .

People started sharing their books of debt to the royal court. The King then again announced that if anybody is still left to submit their accounts share them to the king at the earliest.

This brought trust in people and then all the people shared their accounts of debt to the king. After collecting all the debt accounts of all the people the king asked their ministers to create and segregate the books.

Ministers on their work created the list of all debt collectors who had to take money from multiple people.

Person (debt collector) A if he had to collect 

• Rs. 200 from person X, 

• Rs.500 from person Y, 

• Rs.700 from person Z 

then the book for person debt collector A had Rs. 200+500+700 = 1400 to collected from these people.

Now the King & ministers called person A and confirmed with him that if he had to collect all these Rs.1400 from them. The king then paid him all these Rs.1400 for example and then asked him to write off the debt from all the people ( X,Y,Z)'s accounts.

Likewise the above example the King from his Royal Treasury paid the debt of all the people in the Kingdom.

People were overjoyed and everyone wanted to honor this king. This was an extraordinary thing which no one had ever done at this scale of good work for the common people. People started thinking on how exactly can er honor this great person. Shall we construct a statue of his name ? Shall we name a city on his name ? But what he did was never done before an extraordinary step.

 So in order to mark this extraordinary deed which he made in the heart of the people they decided to name the calendar after him . Hence started Vikaram Samvat. On this day people, traders, merchants started writing their new account books as all the previous accounts were settled by their King.

This day was the day after the day of Diwali. 

So people marked this day as the start of the year and named that Samvat as Vikram Samvat. 

On this day people in business started writing new year of accounts and business books.

Till date we do chopda pujan of the new account books in Gujarat and Maharashtra on these days after Diwali and start our new year (Kartak Sud 1-કાર્તક સुद એકમ ) .

This way the greatness of this king who on the advice of Jain Acharya Siddhsen Divakarsuri made relief in the heart of common people relieving from their debts and putting his footprints forever in history.

Story Listened from Perfecting Youth Session in "Footprints Forever" by Pujya Jain Acharya UadayVallabh Suri .

Vikaram samvat 2080 at Devkinandan Upashray, Naranpura, Rajnagar (Ahmedabad).