Kāmpilī

Kāmpilī is presented as the prosperous royal city of King Brahmadatta, whose court becomes the destination for Kuśanábha’s hundred daughters. Though the poem gives little description of the city itself, it gives it a clear narrative function: it is the seat of a king whose marriage to the maidens joins royal power to a family story of spiritual parentage and physical transformation.

Royal Seat and Setting

The poem identifies Kāmpilī as the place where King Brahmadatta maintains his state. It describes him as rich and great, and compares his rule in the city to Indra’s bliss. The comparison elevates Kāmpilī by association with divine splendour, while the direct details remain political and material: this is a king’s established residence, a metropolis under his rule, and a setting of prosperity.

Brahmadatta and the Marriage

The city’s narrative importance arises through the account of its king. Brahmadatta is introduced as the exceptionally fair son of Chuli and Somada: Chuli grants Somada’s prayer for a son, and she names the child Brahmadatta. The poem then identifies King Brahmadatta as ruling in Kāmpilī. This sequence connects the royal household to a birth granted through a sage’s favour, giving the king’s lineage a sacred dimension as well as a political one.

Kuśanábha plans for Brahmadatta to become the husband of his hundred daughters. The maidens go to the king in obedience to his summons, and the marriage is described through the formal gesture of each daughter placing her hand in Brahmadatta’s palm. The account thus locates the city within a dynastic arrangement: Kāmpilī is where a king receives the daughters of another ruler and where their union is accomplished.

Transformation and Narrative Significance

The wedding brings an immediate change for the daughters. Once each maiden’s hand has been laid in Brahmadatta’s, deformity and cares depart. The poem presents this outcome as following the marriages, not as a quality of Kāmpilī itself; the city is the royal setting in which the change takes place.

Kāmpilī therefore matters less as a mapped landscape than as a centre of rule and a stage for the resolution of this family episode. Its prosperity establishes Brahmadatta’s stature, while the marriage joins that stature to Kuśanábha’s household. The city’s concise appearance carries the narrative from the birth and naming of Brahmadatta to his royal role and the transformation of the hundred daughters.