A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.129

v2.c19.s3.t2.129

Neither is there any lack of tragedies. While Kisā-Gotamī ¹ lies in the street, under labour pains, her husband dies in the jungle; she gives birth to a child, but wandering on she loses both her new-born babe and her elder child; at last she reaches her home, only to find her mother, father and brother dead, burning on one pyre: however, she now takes to the noble, eight-fold path, which leads her to "immortality," to the realisation of Nirvāṇa.² After the tragedy we have a comedy: The woman, who rejoices at being, by her conversion, released from the threshing of rice and from an unloved husband, expresses the incident humorously by saying that she is now rid of "three crooked things," mortar and pestle and her hunchbacked husband.³