During the Buddha’s life time in India there was a multi-millionaire, in the city called Savatthi. He had a most charming daughter who was called Patacara. She had only one brother. Her parents loved her so much that they kept her in the seventh storey of their mansion and did not let her go anywhere.
When she was sixteen years old her parents made arrangements to marry her to a son of another millionaire. But Patacara had already fallen in love with her page boy. A day before the wedding she told her boy-friend,
“My parents are going to give me in marriage to a young man of such and such a family and when I am once inside of my husband’s house you will never get in. Therefore if you really love me don’t delay a moment but find some way or other of getting me out of this place.”
“Very well, my love; tomorrow, early in the morning, I will go to the city gate and wait for you at such and such a place. You manage somehow or other to get out of this place and meet me there.”
Next day early in the morning, as arranged before, she dressed up like a servant, took a water pot and went as if she was going to fetch water. She met him and ran away with him to a very far away place.
After sometime Patacara wanted to give birth to a child and told her husband,
“Here I have no one to help me. But a mother and father always have a soft spot in their heart for their child. Therefore take me home to their house, so that I may give birth to my child in their house and under their care.”
“My darling, what do you say?”,
said he.
“If your mother and father were to see me they would torture me to death. It is out of the question for me to go.”
She begged him over and over again and each time he refused to go. One day when her husband was away she went to her neighbours and told them,
“If my husband ask you where I have gone, tell him that I have gone home to my parents.”
Then she went away. In the evening when he returned the neighbours told him his wife has gone home.
Quickly he ran after her and overtaking her, begged her to return to his home. But she refused and went on, followed by him, until she reached a certain place. There she had the pains and gave birth to a son. Then she thought,
“There is no point of going to my parents’ home now.”
and returned with her husband to his house.
After some time again she wanted to give birth to a child and just as before she left for her parents’s home when her husband was not at home.
Her husband went after her and begged her to return to his home but as she refused to return he too followed her as before.
Now as they went on their way a fearful storm arose. The sky was shining with flashes of lightning. There was strong wind and very heavy rain. Then Patacara told her husband:
“Dear, the birth-pains have come upon me. I cannot stand it; find me a place out of the rain.”
Her husband had an axe with him. He took it and went here and there in the heavy rain looking for sticks and leaves to make a shed for her. Seeing a bush grown on an ant-hill he went there to chop it down. Hardly had he given a few blows to cut a stick when a poisonous snake slipped out of the ant-hill and bit him. Immediately he fell down dead.
Patacara waited and waited for her husband. Her pain become more and more severe and she gave birth to another son. Now the two children, unable to bear up with the rain, wind and cold began to scream and yell at the top of their voices. The mother could not do anything . She put the children in her bosom, stood with her hands and knees; pressed them together and spent the whole night without any sleep.
Early the next morning she took the new born son who looked like a piece of meat; placed him on her hip; gave the older boy one of her fingers to hold and said:
“Come, darling; Your father has left us.”
She went along the path he took and when she came near the ant-hill she saw her husband lying dead, his flesh purple, and his body hard..
“All because of me. My husband died on the road”
and crying and weeping she went away.
She had to cross a river called Acirawati. It was flooded but not deeper than the waist. When she came near the bank of the river she thought;
“Now I am very weak because the whole of last night I had no food, no sleep and lost blood too. I cannot carry both the children at one time.”
So she kept the older boy on the nearer bank. After carrying the younger one across the river, broke some branches of a tree and spread them on the ground. She kept the child on it and returned to the older child.
She had hardly come to the midstream when a hawk saw the younger child and mistaking him for a piece of meat swooped down from the sky to catch him. The mother seeing the hawk swooping down to take away the child screamed with a loud voice such as
“Su! Su!”
The older boy thought
“Mother is calling me”
And in a hurry fell into the water. While the mother was rushing towards him to save him he was swept away by the river and the younger son was carried off by the hawk.
Now Patacara was very very sad and cried and cried saying.
“Once of my sons has been carried off by the hawk; the other has been swept away by the water; by the roadside my husband lies dead.”
She went off crying until she met a man and asked him,
“Sir, where do you live?”
“In Savatthi”
said he.
“In the city of Savatthi in such and such a street lives such and such a family. Do you know them, Sir?”
“Yes, my good lady, I know them. But don’t ask me about that family. Ask me about any other family you know.”
“O! good sir, I know only that family. Please tell me about that family.”
said she.
“Since you insist I cannot hide the truth.”
said the man.
“Do you know there was a heavy rain last night?”
asked he.
“Yes”
answered the lady,
“I know. It rained only on me I suppose, because I had the worst of it.”
“In that heavy rain,”
Continued the man,
“ that house was broken. Its walls fell on the father, mother and only son.”
“Oh! No! Don’t tell me they are dead too!”
said the lady.
“Yes, can you see the fire over there?”
he asked pointing to some flames of fire at a short distance.
“Yes, I can see it”
replied the lady.
“That is their funeral fire.”
said the main.
No sooner had Patacara heard this then she fell on the ground and began to roll here and there with grief. A few people came there and took her to the Temple at Jetawana where the Buddha was preaching. The Buddha asked some ladies to wash her, clothe her, give her food and then he consoled her in the most sweet and wonderful voice. When the Buddha finished His preaching she recovered her senses and begged the Buddha to ordain her. The Buddha did ordain her.
