Soma

Soma was born on December 19, 918, in a farming settlement near Gaya, inside the Pāla realm that linked villages, landlords, and monasteries through taxes, grain, and patronage. His mother Śrīmatī spoke an eastern Indo‑Aryan vernacular from Gauda and kept up visits to a nearby stupa even after settling among Magadhan neighbors. Soma’s father had died in 917, so Śrīmatī lived in her parents’ compound. Vāsudeva handled dealings over the family’s modest plots; Kalyāṇī kept the hearth, the grain bins, and the child within reach.

Śrīmatī husked rice with a wooden pestle, spread grain to dry, and carried water from a shallow well. At dawn she set a clay lamp on a shelf near the cooking place and offered water and a pinch of rice, then tied Soma at her hip with cloth while she moved between tasks.

Late in February 920, when Soma was about fourteen months old, Kalyāṇī reached to lift him and he shoved her arm away. He took quick steps across the packed earth between the hearth and the grain baskets, then dropped into a squat and slapped at spilled husks until she swept them up and scolded him.

That autumn he followed them to the shrine visits. At about twenty months he kept grabbing the small clay lamp before it was lit. Śrīmatī took it back each time. Soma pointed toward the stupa and repeated his clipped word for light until Kalyāṇī steadied the lamp and the wick caught. He clapped and bounced on her hip. The monk Saṅghadāsa accepted their rice and oil and recited verses while the women bowed and poured water from a brass cup.

On February 24, 921, watery diarrhea began. Śrīmatī and Kalyāṇī fed him rice-water with salt between bouts, but the stools continued through the night and the next day. Soma died on February 26. Vāsudeva built a small pyre at the edge of the settlement, and Śrīmatī placed a lamp and a handful of rice beside the ashes.