As every action by gradual steps approaches maturity, so it came to pass that at that time her parents, along with their numerous domestics, were destroyed by a hurricane, only one man escaping with his life. When she, weeping and wailing, suddenly came upon that man, and saw him all aghast, she asked what was the matter. He smote his breast before her, and, sobbing and weeping, told her what had happened. When she had heard that, she again began to weep and wail, and asked what sin she had committed in her earlier existence, that she should have lost all at once her husband and her children, as well as all her relatives. And she came to the conclusion that she ought not to live any longer at home, seeing that her misery would only become greater there. [[224]]So she wandered about till she came to a hill village, where she took up her abode with an old woman who span cotton. And after recovering from her fatigue she took to spinning along with her.
There was in that village a young weaver who lived by his craft, and who was in the habit, from time to time, of buying cotton yarn from that old woman. One day, when she had served him with fine yarn, he asked her whence that came, seeing that she formerly span him only coarse yarn. She told him about the woman who was living in her house; thereupon he expressed a wish to take that woman as his wife, and to provide her with food and clothing and other necessaries of life. The old woman, after having received from him the money for the yarn and food, bade him wait for an answer; then, perfumed, and adorned with flowers, she went to Kṛiśā Gautamī and told her the whole story, praising the qualities of the weaver, saying that he asked her to be his wife, and advising her to accept his proposal. Although at first she opposed the idea, yet at last she gave in, and the marriage took place. Now the weaver was a rough, passionate man, who used constantly to beat her with his fist and with a stick; so she told the old woman that she had married her to a Rākshasa, and that she did not know what she should do, for he beat her every day with his hand and with a stick. The old woman comforted her, and said that he would beat her only so long as no son was born to him, but that later on she and her son would hold their own. When she was in the family way the weaver began to treat her kindly, but she treated him with contempt: with that, however, he put up.
One day the weaver, whom his friends had liberally treated with intoxicating beverages, came home dazed with drink. He found the door closed: his wife was just on the point of being confined, and when he called out to her to open the door, her pains prevented her from being [[225]]able to do so, so he went away in great wrath. When her child was born she opened the door, and as soon as her husband came in she joyfully told him of the birth of their son. But he, whose rage was not yet appeased, being overcome by evil, declared that she, who had already despised him before the son’s birth, would put him to death, in collusion with her son, after the son had grown up. Then he ordered her to light a fire, and set a cauldron over it, and to pour oil into the cauldron and make it boil, and then to fling the new-born babe into the oil and boil it. When she remonstrated with him; begging that he would not kill his own child, he beat her with a stick. Overcome by this cruelty, she threw the child into the boiling oil. When it was cooked he ordered her to take it out and eat its flesh. When she refused, he beat her most severely all over her body, whereupon she ate the child’s flesh. When her husband’s rage was appeased, and he was full of remorse and overcome by sleep, Kṛiśā Gautamī took as much food as she could carry, and went away.
She attached herself to some travellers from the north who had disposed of their goods in Vārāṇasī. Remarking her beauty, their caravan-leader conceived a passion for her, and asked her who she was and whither she was going. She replied, “My husband has been bitten by a snake; of my two sons, one has been carried off by a jackal, and the other has perished in the waters; and my father and my mother have been killed by a storm. I, who am now without any protector, am wandering at will, and I am going to journey along with this company of travellers.” The caravan-leader made her his wife. Soon afterwards the travellers were suddenly attacked by robbers, in fighting with whom the caravan-leader was killed, and Kṛiśā Gautamī became the wife of the robber chief. But in his turn the robber found his death at the hands of the king of that country, and Kṛiśā Gautamī [[226]]was transferred to the king’s zenana. The king died, and she was buried alive in his tomb, after having had great honour shown her by the women, the princes, the ministers, and a vast concourse of people. Some men from the north country, who were wont to rob graves, broke into this one also. The dust they raised entered into Kṛiśā Gautamī’s nostrils, and made her sneeze. The grave-robbers were terrified, thinking that she was a Vetāla, and they fled; but Kṛiśā Gautamī escaped from the grave through the opening which they had made. Conscious of all her troubles, and affected by the absence of provisions, just as a violent storm arose, she went out of her mind. Covered with merely her underclothing, her hands and feet foul and rough, with long locks and pallid complexion, she wandered about until she reached Śrāvastī.
There, at the sight of Bhagavant, she recovered her intellect. Bhagavant ordered Ānanda to give her an over robe, and he taught her the doctrine, and admitted her into the ecclesiastical body, and he appointed her the chief of the Bhikshuṇīs who had embraced discipline. [[227]]
[1] Kah-gyur, xi., pp. 122–130. The principal theme of this tale occurs in the 25th chapter of the Dsanglun, but the Bhikshuṇī Utpalavarṇā is the heroine of the story. Kṛiśā Gautamī (Kisagotamī among the Southern Buddhists) has been made known by the work translated by Captain Rogers from the Burmese under the title of “Buddhagosha’s Parables” (London, 1870, pp. 98, &c.), and has afforded a subject for comparisons with certain points in Greek tales to Prof. Rohde (see Zeitschrift für das Gymnasialwesen, 1876, Feb., p. 118).—S. [↑]