Vasumati, the princess of Champapuri, was orphaned in a war and sold into the household of a Kaushambi merchant named Dhanavah. Renamed Chandana for her gentle nature, she lived as a servant — but with the dignity of one whose inner light could not be hidden. The merchant's jealous wife, fearing his kindness toward Chandana, shaved the girl's head, chained her ankles, and locked her in a cellar with only a clay bowl of dry boiled gram. Three days passed. On the fourth, Bhagwan Mahavir entered Kaushambi for alms. He was observing a most difficult vow: he had silently resolved to take food only from a princess in chains, with shaven head, holding a winnow of boiled gram, weeping with one foot inside the threshold and one outside, after sunset. No layperson knew this resolve. For five and a half months Mahavir had walked without food, finding no offerer who fit every condition. That afternoon, Chandana stepped to the threshold with her bowl. One ankle was chained inside the room, one foot outside. Her head was shaven. She held the boiled gram. She wept — for hunger, and for the joy of seeing the saint pass by. Every condition matched. Mahavir extended his hands, and Chandana fed him. In that instant the chains broke open of themselves. The gram in her bowl turned to rice and ghee. She would go on to become the first sadhvi of Mahavir's sangha and the head of an order of thirty-six thousand nuns.