மணிமேகலை
Maṇimēkalai — The Jewelled Girdle
Cāttaṉār · c. 5th–6th century CE · மாகாவியம் — The Great Epics
The direct sequel to the Cilappatikāram — where that epic ends in divine fury and justice, this one begins in beauty and ends in liberation. Maṇimēkalai is the daughter of Mātatavi, the courtesan whose dance undid Kōvalaṉ. Born into a world of pleasure and performance, she turns — irrevocably, miraculously — toward the Buddhist path.
A sea-goddess transports her to a sacred island. She is given the Amutacurapi — the inexhaustible bowl that feeds all the hungry, forever, without emptying. She feeds the prisoners of Pukār, the starving of Madurai, the sick of Vañci. And then she debates the philosophers of every major school — the materialists, the fatalists, the dualists, the Jains, the Vedic ritualists — and refutes them all, one by one, with the teaching of dependent origination.
At the festival of Indra in Pukār — the same festival where Kōvalaṉ first saw Mātatavi — Uṭāyakumāraṉ, the Cōḷa prince, sees Mātatavi's daughter Maṇimēkalai and is struck by desire. She flees. The sea-goddess Maṇimēkalā transports her to the sacred island of Maṇipallavam, where the Buddha's throne stands empty and radiant.
There she receives the Amutacurapi — the bowl of infinite compassion — and a vision of her past lives. She returns to Pukār transformed, feeds the prisoners with the bowl, and witnesses her mother Mātatavi also renouncing the world. She dons the saffron robe and begins to wander: Vañci, Kāñci, the great cities of the Tamil south.
In Kāñci, she encounters the teachers of every philosophical school and defeats them all in debate with the Buddha's teaching on dependent origination. At last, before the Buddha's footprint in Kāñci, she achieves direct insight and attains liberation. The bowl is set down. The journey is complete.