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
« Parce que cette jeune fille—née de sa propre lignée—bien qu’apte à être donnée en mariage à un autre, n’a pas été unie comme il se doit à un époux par cet homme pécheur ; qu’il devienne donc un “śākhā-mṛga”, un animal demeurant sur les branches (singe). »
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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.