One day she took tila-meal, rice, a small cooking-pot, and a spoon, and went to that part of the cemetery where the bodies are left to rot (uncremated), and there with three human skulls she made an oven and kindled a fire under it. Then she went to the tank, bathed her head, washed her clothes, and returned to the oven. There she let down her hair and began to wash the rice. At that time the Bodhisat was Indra, the king of the gods. He, at that moment, for Bodhisats are indeed ever on the alert, looking down on the world, saw that woe-begone woman, who thought that "Justice was dead," and was therefore desirous of presenting to it the food offered to the manes. "To-day I'll let her see my power," said he. Disguised as a brahman he appeared to her in the high road and stood before her as she was stepping aside to let him pass and said, "Surely, mother, you are not going to cook food in a cemetery. What will you do there with meal and boiled rice?" By way of beginning a conversation he uttered the following gâtha:—
"O clothed in white, with hair so dank and long,
O clean Kaccâni say what means this pot,
This meal so fine, and rice you wash with care;
On whose account is all this food prepared?"
Then she answers his question in the following gâtha:—
"This meal you see, well-cooked shall be I trow,
But not for my own use, O brahman learned.
Just law is dead, its ghost I'll now appease.
And offer here the food its shades demand."
Indra then replies:—
"Your duty do, when once what's right you've leiirnt.
Who says to thee, I pray, that 'Law' is dead?
Of matchless might the 'Thousand-eyed' yet lives;
He just and even-handed is forsooth."
On hearing this the other makes answer:—
"Full well I know, no doubts here trouble me.
The 'Law' is dead, O brahman wise and true.
The wicked live in peace and bliss on earth.
For she who barren was, and me expelled,
Is now the joyful mother of a child.
She lords it now o'er all the house I ween,
While I an outcast live and woman lone."
