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312 TWO PRAKRIT VERSIONS OF THE MAŅIPATI-CARITA 279. She picked it up and went away and I lay as I fell,
lamenting most piteously before the durgā of the gate. 280. Wailing, I was told by the compassionate divinity of the
city: 'These are our boundary limits with the śākinīs. 281. Whatever is in front of the city gate, whether two-footed
thing or four-footed thing, that is theirs : whatever is
within all that belongs to us. 282. So your buttock being outside the city was not protected
by me, but do not weep, I will soon put it right for you. 283. So saying, that inapprehensible divine being, exercising
her grace restored my buttock as it was before. 284. After I had made great obeisance to her I went to my
father-in-law's house and, seeing the door shut, looked
through an aperture. 285. There I saw my mother-in-law and my wife eating meat
and drinking wine with extreme relish. 286. Now meanwhile my mother-in-law said: “This meat is
very sweet ! Then this is what my wife replied: 287. "Mother, this is meat off your son-in-law.' Then she
recounted the whole story as previously told up to the
point where my buttock was cut off. 288. Aghast with fear I went home and the desire for release
being induced in me, I received the initiation at the
feet of a guru. Of such nature was my intense fear. 289. Then in the fourth watch the sādhu Yaunaka said :
Bhayâti-bhaya' and told his own story to Prince
| Abhaya: 290. There was a burgher of Ujjain, Dhanadatta whose wife
was Subhadrā. I was their son and my wife was
called Srimati. 291. Because of her love for me she would drink every day
the water in which she had washed my feet, whilst I
with loving mind would not cross her word. 292. Thus time passed. One day she told me: 'My dearest
one, I have an intense craving to eat the flesh of a fat-tailed sheep.
