Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c7.378

c7.378

(1) Origin. There was once on the banks of the river, Tuṅgabhadrā, a village made sacred and prosperous by the brahmins who lived there. In that village lived a noble brahmin named Ātmadeva. His wife was a quarrelsome woman named Dhundhulī. Even after many years of married life they got no children and Ātmadeva, greatly grief-stricken, left his home and went to the forests. He was sitting on the shore of a lake after quenching his thirst from it when a Sannyāsin came that way. Ātmadeva told him about his domestic life and pleaded that he should suggest a way to get a son for him. The sannyāsin sat in meditation for some time and contemplated on the horoscope of Ātmadeva and regretfully informed him that according to his horoscope he was to have no children for seven successive births. He, therefore, advised Ātmadeva to abandon all his worldly pleasures and accept sannyāsa for the rest of his life. But Ātmadeva was not to be discouraged by this prophecy and he urged the sannyāsin to help him somehow to get a child. The sannyāsin then gave him a fruit and asked him to give it to his wife and ask her to observe a life of fasting for a period of one year.