The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

209 - Kāyaśaṇḍikai’s Story
‘I come from the north from the city of Kāñcanapura situated in the
north of Śēḍi in mount Kailāsa. With the Vidyādhara, my husband, I
came on an excursion to see the Podiyil Hill 99 in the south.
As fate had decreed it, we stopped for a little while on the sands of a
wild stream. A Brahman, with the thread across his breast and his
twisted locks of hair dangling, wearing his garment of fibre, had gone
to his bath in the cool waters of a tank someway across, leaving on the
sands on a teak leaf a ripe jambu as big as a palm fruit.
I walked along proudly and, not seeing the fruit, tripped over it and
destroyed it as a result of my bad deeds.
causing destruction to his fruit, [154] and addressed me thus:
‘This Jambu fruit is a divine one that ripens once in twelve years, and
the tree yields but one such fruit during that long period. That fruit
intended for my food, you have destroyed. May you forget, therefore,
the mantra by which you are enabled to travel in the air. Further may
you suffer from the disease ‘elephant-hunger’ till I satisfy my hunger
by taking the next fruit that ripens twelve years hence.’
The day he marked for my release from this disease seems to be this
day now that you have destroyed that unquenchable hunger. When
this Rishi had departed in hunger, my husband returned, and,
understanding what had happened, was sore troubled in heart, as I
had become subjected to this great suffering even without fault of my
own.
99 The hill of Pāṇḍya kings in Tinnevelli district in the north-west corner of
it in the Western Ghats at the source of the River Tāmraparṇi.