Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c8.1563

c8.1563

NIṢĀKARA II. A great muni, who attained Svarga after passing through many lives. His story is given below:— There was a great ascetic and erudite scholar in all branches of knowledge called Kośakāra, son of muni Mudgala. Kośakāra's wife was Dharmiṣṭhā, daughter of Vātsyāyana. To them was born a son, an idiot and a deaf and dumb child, whom they forsook at the gates of the mother's house. At the same time an evil-minded Rākṣasa woman called Śūrpākṣī, who was in the habit of lifting children came there with a lean child. She replaced Dharmiṣṭhā's child with the lean one and returned with it to the Śālobharaparvata where her blind husband asked her what she had brought for his food. She told him about the changelling child with her when he said as follows "Return the child at once to where it was found. The child's father is a great man of knowledge and wisdom and when he hears about your action, he will curse us. So, return the child and bring the child of some one else." As soon as she heard these words of her husband she rose up in the sky in great alarm. Hearing the cries of the Rākṣasa child left at their gates Dharmiṣṭhā and her husband came out, and the child which, in its colour and shape resembled their child exactly, Kośakāra said thus : "Oh! Dharmiṣṭhā ! this must be some ghost. Some one is lying here in the same form as our child to hoodwink and cheat us."