Tribes in Ancient India c45.17

c45.17

The legendary story of the origin of Aśmaka, founder of the tribe, barely mentioned in the *Mahābhārata*, is narrated in full in the *Bṛhannāradīya Purāṇa*. Once Sudāsa, who is often identified with the Ṛgvedic hero who won the battle of the ten kings, went to the forest to hunt. He killed a tiger, and the dying animal took the shape of a terrible monster bent on wreaking vengeance on the king. An occasion soon presented itself. When Vasiṣṭha, the king’s priest, had departed after performing a sacrifice for Sudāsa, the monster assumed the form of the priest, appeared before the king, and asked him to prepare meat for him to eat. The monster once more changed his appearance, and appeared before King Sudāsa in the guise of a cook. When ordered by the king to prepare a dish of meat for Vasiṣṭha, he cooked human flesh; and the king offered the dish to the genuine Vasiṣṭha when he arrived. Vasiṣṭha thought the king to be wicked in offering him meat; and when, after meditation, he discovered that it was actually human flesh, he cursed the king, saying that he would become a monster, greedy for human flesh. When the king told him that it was (supposedly) by Vasiṣṭha’s own order that the dish had been prepared, the Ṛṣi meditated once more, learnt the whole truth, and modified his curse to have effect for twelve years only. The king, in his turn, was about to curse Vasiṣṭha, but his queen Madayantī entreated him to forbear, and appeased his wrath. The king washed his feet with the curse-water; his legs turned black, and thenceforward he was famous as Kalmāṣapāda (‘having speckled feet’).