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freed from a slaughter house.' Sukumaärikā sat on the bed depressed and downcast.
Next morning, the maid servant reported the whole of her story to her father who felt completely perturbed and was at a loss to know what he should do about his daughter's fate. The only consolation that he could offer to her was that all these things that were happening to her here must have been the fruits of actions done in her previous birth. All that she could now do, he suggested, was to live a life of charity. She should prepare plenty of food and distribute it to the poor and deserving people like Pottila. Sukumarikā had no alternative but to agree to her father's plan.
At that time, there had arrived a group of nuns called Gopalikās in the town. They were all well read and when one of these days some of them visited the house of Sagaradatta, Sukumarikå gave them food but she very much liked to engage them in conversation. She opened out her heart to them and said how very disagreeable she had become to her husband Sagara who had developed such a deep aversion for her that he would not like even to utter her name, leave aside sharing any enjoyment with her. She was even considered disagreeable by the other man to whom she was given. She would therefore appeal to the learned and venerable nuns to suggest to her a way out of her present state of depression. She said she might even ask them, as Pottila did, to find something like magic or witch-craft to help her out. The nuns replied that the only remedy that they could think of was for Sukumārikā to become a lay disciple.
Accordingly Sukumarikā after obtaining her father's permission, was duly initiated into the order of nuns by the Gopalikās. As a nun, the young lady did not hesitate to observe all the rules of celibacy and fasts of two, three and four days on as many occasions as the order of nuns demanded. One day, Sukumarikǎ asked the Gopalika nuns whether she could undertake a fast for two days without a break, during which she would stand facing the sun, allowing her body to be scorched; she said she would stand near the garden Subhūmibhāga, outside the city of Campã. The nuns replied that what she was proposing could not
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