Neminath and Rajimati

The opening of the story

On the western shore of Bharat, where the ocean beats against walls of jewelled stone, stood Dwarka, the city the gods had raised in a single day and night for the Yadav clan. Shri Krishna ruled there, with his elder brother Balram beside him. Krishna's father Vasudev had an elder brother, King Samudravijay, and Samudravijay's queen was Shivadevi. Before her son was born, the tradition says, Shivadevi dreamed of the rim of a great wheel made of dark jewels rising into the sky. So the boy was named Arishtanemi, the jewel-rimmed wheel, and everyone in the family simply called him Nemi.

Nemi grew up dark-skinned like his cousin Krishna, broad in the shoulder and very strong, and so handsome that people stopped in the street to look at him. Yet he was the quietest of all the Yadav princes. He did not boast or quarrel, he did not hunt, and the talk of kingdoms and conquest that filled his cousins' evenings seemed to pass straight through him without leaving a mark.