Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c5.602

c5.602

DHARMADĀTTA I. A king of Kosala. He had a wife named Nāgaśrī. Her chastity she became a celebrity with the name of Arundhatī of the earth. They got a daughter named Tārādattā. Once when Dharmadatta and Nāgaśrī were engaged in conversation both remembered their lives in their previous births. It was not allowed to speak about previous births in open and if anybody did so death was the penalty. But Nāgaśrī could not control herself and prepared to accept the worst. Nāgaśrī told her husband thus: "I am just reminded of my life in my previous birth. I will tell you my story. I was the servant maid of a brahmin named Mādhava in this same place. I had a husband named Devadāsa then. My husband was the son of a merchant. We made a small house of our own and lived there peacefully. Each of us would bring food from where we worked and everyday we used to set apart a portion of what we got for guests and the pitṛs. We were satisfied with what was left after that. If we got more than one set of clothes we would give it to the poor. Then there came a famine in the country. Our earning also was reduced daily. We lived in hunger. One day a hungry and tired sannyāsī came to our place and we gave him the whole of our food. My husband died that day and I gave away my life jumping into the funeral pyre of my husband. Then I was born in the family of a King and became your wife."