History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c11.s6.17

c11.s6.17

Outside the city of Sāvatthi Gosāla once more asked Mahāvīra to forecast the results of the day's begging expedition, and was told that he would receive human flesh. In the city a woman who had recently lost her child had been told by a fortune-teller that her next child would live if she gave some of the flesh of her dead child, mixed with rice, to a mendicant. Gosāla happened to be passing at the time, and received and ate the alms without knowing that they contained the human flesh prophesied by Mahāvīra. When he returned Mahāvīra asked him to vomit, and he realized that the prophecy had been fulfilled. As he could not again find the woman's house, in his anger he cursed the whole district by the same formula as before, and it was burnt to the ground.³