The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

166 - Sutamatī and the Kind Bhikṣu
had given up the Jain hermitage and accompanied Maṇimēkhalai to
the garden.
Sutamatī replied that she was the daughter of a Brahman and his wife
both of Champa. Having lost her mother early, and while she was still
under the guardianship of her father, she was carried off by a
Vidyādhara called Mārutavēga, from her native place.
The father, coming in search of her towards the famous bathing ghat
of Kanyākumāri ‘constructed by monkeys’, saw her in this town as he
was returning after his morning bath in the Kāvēri.
Having enquired how I came to be here, he would not give me up,
although I had become unworthy to live among Brahmans, and took
upon himself the life of a mendicant beggar to eke out his and my
livelihood. In one of his begging rounds a cow, recently in calf, ran at
him and tore open his stomach. Holding his entrails in his hand, he
came to the hermitage of the Jains, which not long since was my
habitation, and sought asylum with them. The inmates of the
hermitage rather than give asylum turned me out from there and sent
me along with him.
We were wandering in this forlorn condition crying out if there were
any kind-hearted people to take [123] us into their protection. A
kind-hearted Buddhist Bhikṣu who was coming on his midday round,
handing his begging bowl to me, carried my father to the vihāra,
where he and his companions lived, and thus helped to dispel my
father’s pains and sorrows of death. This hermit Saṅghadharma
taught her the teaching of the Buddha:–