Reading guide
A speaker in explicit servitude, unlike earlier poems
‘I used to be a water-carrier. Even when it was cold, I would always plunge into the water, afraid of my masters' beatings, harassed by fear of abuse and anger’ names a social position — servitude under masters who beat her — distinct from the courtesans, widows, and laywomen speaking elsewhere in this collection.
A logical demolition, not a doctrinal reply
Puṇṇikā's rebuttal to the brahmin's ritual belief is witty and relentless: if water washed away wickedness, ‘would not they all go to heaven, then: all the frogs and the turtles, dragons, dolphins’, and ‘butchers of sheep and pigs... bandits, executioners’ too — and if rivers carry away bad deeds, they would carry away good deeds just as easily.
A timing left honestly unresolved
Sujato's own note flags a genuine puzzle: the verb tense suggests she is recalling this as a past event, which commentary reads as happening before she ordained — yet the brahmin's respectful address to her and the boldness of her teaching suggest she may already have been a nun. This guide reports the puzzle rather than resolving it.
A poem named for her, closing on his words
After Puṇṇikā refuses his gift of an ablution cloth and instructs him toward real ethical practice and refuge, the poem's own final verses are his: ‘I used to be a brahmin only by kin, today I truly am a brahmin’ — an unusual structural choice for a poem attributed to and named for a nun.
Key terms
The text
§1“I used to be a water-carrier. Even when it was cold, I would always plunge into the water, afraid of my masters’ beatings, harassed by fear of abuse and anger. Brahmin, what are you afraid of, that you always plunge into the water, your limbs trembling in the freezing cold?”
§2“Oh, but you already know, Madam Puṇṇikā, when you ask me: I am doing good deeds, to ward off the wickedness I have done. Whosoever young or old performs a wicked deed, by ablution in water they are released from their wicked deed.”
§3“Who on earth told you this, one ignoramus to another: ‘Actually, by ablution in water one is released from a wicked deed.’ Would not they all go to heaven, then: all the frogs and the turtles, dragons, dolphins, and other water-dwellers too? Butchers of sheep and pigs, fishermen, animal trappers, bandits, executioners, and others of evil deeds: by ablution in water they too would be released from their wicked deeds. If these rivers had carried away your bad deeds in the past, they would also carry away your good deeds, from which you’d be prevented. Brahmin, the thing that you are afraid of, when you always plunge into the water, do not do that very thing, don’t let the cold harm your skin.”
§4“I have been on the wrong path, and you’ve guided me to the noble path. Madam, I give to you this ablution cloth.”
§5“Keep the cloth for yourself, I do not want it. If you fear suffering, if you don’t like suffering, then don’t do bad deeds either openly or in secret. If you should do a bad deed, or you’re doing one now, you won’t be freed from suffering, though you fly away and flee. If you fear suffering, if you don’t like suffering, go for refuge to the Buddha, the unaffected, to his teaching and to the Sangha. Undertake the precepts, that will be good for you.”
§6“I go for refuge to the Buddha, the unaffected, to his teaching and to the Sangha. I undertake the precepts, that will be good for me. I used to be brahmin only by kin, today I truly am a brahmin! Master of the three knowledges, accomplished in wisdom, I’m a scholar, a bathed initiate.”
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