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MARRIAGE OF KRŞŅA WITH RUKMIŅI AND OTHERS 195 One day his wife, Lakşmivati, went to a garden. She saw a peahen's egg and touched it with her hand which was smeared with kunkuma.195 By that touch the egg became different in colour and odor and was abandoned by the mother for sixteen ghatikās, 196 as she did not know that it was hers. Then, when she had seen it in its proper condition again from rain-water, the mother covered it and in time it became a peacock. Again Lakşmivati went there, saw the attractive young peacock, and took him away, though the mother wept. She put him in a cage in her house, satisfied him with food and drink, and taught him dancing so that he danced beautifully. But his mother, the peahen, chained by her affection for her son did not leave the place, giving harsh cries.
Then the people said to her: 'Your curiosity is satisfied by him. This wretched peahen is dying. Set her son free.' Compassionate from that speech, she released him, grown, sixteen months old, and took him to the place from which she had taken him. By that carelessness the Brāhmani acquired very strong feeling-karma of separation from her son, lasting for sixteen years.
One day a muni, Samādhigupta by name, entered her house for alms as she was looking at herself, adorned, in a mirror. Her husband, the Brāhman, said to her, ‘Give him alms.' Just then he was called by some one and went outside. She, making a spitting-sound and muttering harsh words, sent the sage away and shut the door quickly. Because of that action of disgust on the seventh day she had oozing leprosy over all her body and, disgusted with existence, she entered the fire. After death she became the donkey of the washerman of that village. After dying again, she became a sow. living in a cave in the same village. After death she became a bitch, was burned in a forest-fire, and died there, acquiring a human birth by that death.
195 230. A red power whose chief ingredient is turmeric. See I, n. 394.
196 231. A ghaţikā is 24 minutes, so the egg was deserted for 6 hours and 24 minutes.
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