The man said, “Thy two parents’ mansion (prasāda) having broken down and fallen last night on account of the rain, and the two having died, it is the smoke, indeed, of the funeral pyre which burns the two, that is visible there,” he said.
After that, the woman lost her senses, and being without goods she began to go on still, quite like a mad person. The Dēvatāwā taking as his dwelling-place the Banyan-tree near the road, thought, “Should this woman go on this path, through that depression of spirits she will jump into the fire that burns those two persons. I must show this woman a different path.” Having said [this], he showed [her it].
The woman went on that path. Having gone, she went to a pansala. Having gone to it and become a nun she remained there until she died. (A variant agrees closely with this.)
North-western Province.
This is part of the story of the misfortunes of Kṛiśa Gautamī, one of the chief Buddhist nuns, as they are related in the Tibetan Kah-gyur (A. von Schiefner’s Tibetan Tales, Ralston, p. 216). Her father was a rich householder of Benares, by whom she was married to a young merchant. For her first confinement she returned home, afterwards rejoining her husband. For the second, she and her husband went off in a waggon in which she was confined when they had gone about half way. Her husband sat down under a tree to await the event, fell asleep, a snake bit him, and he died on the spot. When the woman got down she found he was dead. In the meantime a thief stole the oxen. She then walked on with the children till she came to a river, flooded by a sudden rain. She carried the infant across, and while returning in the water for the other saw a jackal carry off the baby. When she waved her hands to frighten the animal, the elder child, thinking she was calling him, sprang down a high bank into the river, and was killed. The mother pursued the jackal, which dropped the infant, but it was then dead. At about the same time her parents and all their household but one man were destroyed by a hurricane. She met the survivor and heard his sad story, after which she wandered to a hill village, and lived with an old woman, spinning cotton yarn. After other unfortunate experiences she became a Buddhist nun.