“I am going into the forest of penance,” he said. Then he added the following verse:—
“A small measure of cooked rice, a lonely couch, ensures bliss. A cotton double garment is to be worn. All else is tinged with gloom.”
For some time Bhadrā took charge of the household. Seeing the slave-women with wales on their hands and feet, clad in hempen garments, with dishevelled hair, striking each other with pestles on account of mortars, pestles, cooking-pits, and the like, she asked them to whom they belonged. They replied, “To Kapila’s daughter, [[201]]Bhadrā.” Being asked if Bhadrā had chosen them herself, they replied that it was not she but her mother-in-law who had taken them for the work of her household. Then she also was moved; and, as at that time the Buddha was not yet born, she bestowed gifts upon the Tīrthakas, Miniām̃sakas, Parivrajakas, Nirgranthas, Ājīvakas, Ash-bearers, and so forth, and upon the poor and needy, and the askers for alms; so that the poor were not poor, and the slave-women, the day-labourers, and the servants had no more to cook.
After dividing all his property among ministers, friends, relations, and connections, Nyagrodhaja entered his house and inspected the clothes-room, with the intention of choosing a humble garment. He took out from thence a large cotton robe worth a hundred thousand pieces of money, and he gave a similar robe to Bhadrā, but the house he made over to his kinsmen.
Then said Nyagrodhaja to Bhadrā, “O Bhadrā, whither will you go?”
“I will go together with you into the forest of penance,” she replied.
“It is not allowable for me to live in the penance forest with a wife,” he said.
“In that case,” replied Bhadrā, “let me be the first to go forth from the house.”
“Why so?” he asked.
“If you are the first to go forth from here,” said Bhadrā, “many men will long after the wife, as after rice-soup that is ready for the table. It is not becoming that, if you go away, other men should long after me.”