The Daughter Offers Herself to Save Her Family
A family faces a terrible choice: to save themselves, they must abandon their daughter. As her parents weep, the daughter does not plead for her life. Instead, she constructs a calm, logical argument for why she must be the one sacrificed—to save her father, her mother, her young brother, and the lineage itself.
The parents were overcome with sorrow, lamenting their fate in front of their daughter. When she heard their words, she was herself overcome with grief. But she did not join them in weeping. She spoke.
“Why are you lamenting so grievously?” she asked. “Why are you weeping as if you have no one to protect you? Now listen to what I have to say. On hearing my words, do what is proper.”
Her argument was not an emotional appeal. It was a systematic case for self-sacrifice, built on dharma (righteous duty) and cold practicality.
“There is no doubt that dharma dictates that I have to be sacrificed at some time,” she began. Since she would have to be abandoned eventually, they should abandon her now and save everyone through her alone. That was the very reason men desired children—so that they could be saved in times of crisis. “That time has come. Use me as a boat and save yourselves.”
She invoked the etymology of the word for son—putra—because a child saves (tra) his ancestors from hell (put). “A child saves everywhere, in this world and in the next.” She, a daughter, would perform that saving function.
She thought of the ancestors. “My grandfathers have always desired to have daughter’s sons through me. Now I shall myself save them by saving my father’s life.”
Then she laid out the grim future if her father died. Her brother was very young and would perish soon after. With her father gone to heaven and her brother dead, the shraddha rites—the funeral cakes offered to the ancestors—would cease. That would displease the ancestors forever.
Her own fate, if abandoned later, would be misery upon misery. “I shall descend from misery to misery and will finally perish in great distress.” It was better to be sacrificed purposefully now.
She summarized the stakes with stark clarity: “The son is one’s own self. The wife is one’s friend. The daughter is the cause of suffering. Save yourself from that cause of suffering. Set me on the path of dharma.”
Without her father, she would be an unprotected, wretched girl, miserable everywhere she went. Therefore, she said, “I shall save my lineage and I shall acquire the merit that this difficult act brings.” She asked her father to be kind by abandoning her—the one who was to be abandoned eventually. “Save yourself for my sake, for the sake of dharma and for the sake of your lineage.”
She ended by contrasting two futures. The painful one: her father ascending to heaven, leaving the family to roam like dogs, begging food from others. The alternative: “But if you are saved from this calamity with your relatives and are healthy, I shall be very happy in the immortal world.”
When they heard her piteous lamentations—this calm, devastating speech—all three, the father, the mother, and the daughter, began to weep.