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UTTARADHYAYANA.
Râgimati thought: Shame upon my life, that I have been forsaken by him! it is better I should turn nun.' (29)
Firm and decided she cut off her tresses which were black like bees and dressed with a brush and comb1. (30)
And Vâsudêva said to her who had cut off her hair, and subdued her senses: 'Lady, cross the dreadful ocean of the Samsâra without difficulty!' (31)
When she had entered the order, the virtuous and very learned lady induced there many people, her relations and servants, to enter the order too. (32)
On her way to mount Raivataka it began to rain; her clothes being wet, she entered a cave and waited there in the darkness while it was raining. (33)
She took off her clothes and was naked as she was born, thus she was seen by Rathanêmi 2, whose
the Kâvyamâlâ of 1886. It is what is technically called a samasyâpurana or gloss. The last line of each stanza is taken from the Mêghadûta of Kâlidâsa, and the first three lines are added by the poet to make the whole fit the circumstances of his tale.
1 Kukkaphanaga, in Sanskrit kûrkaphanaka. According to the scholiasts phanaka is a comb made of bamboo.-I have translated, 'cut off her tresses,' but literally it is: 'plucked out her hair.' However, I do not think that women also are to pluck out their hair.
2 Rathanêmi was her husband's elder brother. According to a legend told in Haribhadra's Tîkâ of the Dasavaikâlika Sûtra (see Leumann in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. 46, p. 597), Rathanêmi fell in love with Râgîmatî. But that lady in order to make him see his wrong, vomited a sweet beverage she had drunk, in a cup and offered it him. On his turning away with disgust she explained to him her meaning: she too had been vomited, as it were, by Arishtanêmi, notwithstanding which he wanted to have her. She then taught him the Gaina creed, and he became a monk.
