Vamana Purana — Jabali on the Banyan Tree, Shloka 65
Jabali Bound on the Banyan Tree and Nandayanti’s Appeal at Sri-Kantha on the Yamuna
यस्मात् स्वतनुजातेयं परदेयापि पापिना योजिता नैव पतिना तस्माच्छाखामृगो ऽस्तु सः
yasmāt svatanujāteyaṃ paradeyāpi pāpinā yojitā naiva patinā tasmācchākhāmṛgo 'stu saḥ
«لأن هذه الفتاة—وهي من صلبه—مع أنها صالحة لأن تُزوَّج لغيره، لم يُقِمْ ذلك الآثمُ وصلَها بزوجٍ على وجه الدharma؛ فلْيَصِرْ إذن “شاخا-مريغا” (śākhā-mṛga)، أي حيوانًا يسكن الأغصان (قردًا).»
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FAQs
It signals the social-dharmic expectation that a daughter is to be given in marriage to a suitable groom through proper rites and consent; the verse implies a violation of that normative process.
The curse matches the moral logic of degradation: a human who disrupts lawful social order is reduced to an animal state. ‘Śākhā-mṛga’ commonly evokes a monkey—restless, tree-bound—symbolizing loss of human dignity and social standing.
Such curses often serve as origin-stories for local phenomena—e.g., a named grove, a lineage of transformed beings, or a ritual prohibition—later anchored to a specific tīrtha. Even when the named site is not in these three verses, the etiological pattern is characteristic of tīrtha-māhātmya composition.