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ikkai. They examined him and diagnosed his disease in their own way and recommended various remedies such as smearing the body with oil, massaging it with perfumes, drinking oily medicines, vomitting and purging, bathing and fomenting, bleeding and cutting, taking drugs made from barks and roots, leaves and flowers. But no one could effect any cure, not even of one of the sixteen diseases. Ikkai was thus abandoned by physicians and left by his attendants. He felt helpless and distressed but even then he lived a long life of two hundred and fifty years, all full of misery and when the time of death came, he died only to be re-born as a hell-being in that region of hell called Ratnaprabhā. He lived there for one sãgaropama. After this period was over, he entered the womb of queen Mrgā as a son in this very city of Mrgāgrāma.
Queen Mrgä suffered terrible pain when the boy came in her womb in the form of a foetus. She became unpleasant, lost all her charm and the king considered her to be disagreeable and unwholesome. He stopped loving her altogether. The queen felt very bad about this and blamed all the change that had come over her and for the feelings of her husband on the child in her womb. She therefore thought that it would be much better if she aborted it. She administered a variety of medicines to cause abortion but unfortunately it did not happen. She had to accept all the tiredness and fatigue of the full period of pregnancy along with its unpleasant effects.
Even while the child was in the womb of its mother, its eight veins flowing inside and eight veins flowing outside discharged pus and blood. Even at that time, the child suffered from a disease called Aggia (Agnika) which causes over appetite and also produces the capacity to digest everything. Whatever the boy ate was quickly digested and turned into pus and blood and this also the boy quickly devoured. When the child was born, the disease still persisted.
After the full period of pregnancy was over the queen gave birth to this son who was blind from birth and his entire body was nothing but a lump of flesh. When the mother saw the totally deformed body of the child, she felt terribly frightened and decided to abandon it
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