[92] (The elder asked:)
"Naked you are, and hideous of form;
foul-smelling, a putrid stench wafts from you;
you are swarmed all about by flies —
who, pray, are you, standing here?"
(The petī replied:)
"Venerable sir, I am a petī, gone to a woeful state, a denizen of the world of Yama (yamaloka);
having done an evil deed, I have gone from here to the world of petas (petaloka).
In the morning I give birth to seven sons, and in the evening to seven others again;
having borne them, I devour them — and even they are not enough for me.
My heart burns and smoulders with hunger;
I find no quenching (nibbuti) — I am as one scorched by fire in the blazing heat."
(The elder asked:)
"What misdeed was done by body, by speech, or by mind?
Through the ripening (vipāka) of what kamma do you devour the flesh of your sons?"
(The petī replied:)
"I had two sons; both had come to the prime of youth;
and I, endowed with the strength of my sons, despised my own husband.
Then my husband, angered, brought home another woman as a co-wife;
and she conceived. I intended evil against her:
with a corrupted mind I brought about the fall of the child in her womb (gabbhapātana).
Her embryo of three months fell away as pus and blood;
at that her mother, enraged, gathered my relatives together;
she made me swear an oath, and she had me reviled.
And I uttered a dreadful oath — and false speech (musāvāda):
'May I devour the flesh of sons, if this was done by me!'
Through the ripening of that kamma and of the false speech — of both —
I devour the flesh of my sons, smeared with pus and blood."
End of the Sattaputtakhādikapetavatthu, the seventh — the Story of the Petī Who Devoured Seven Sons.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.