The Manimekalai is a Tamil Buddhist text which tells the story of the renunciation of Manimekalai, the daughter of a courtesan. In this talk, Dr. Vijayalakshmy discusses the relationship between this text and the earlier Pali poems of the Therigatha, arguing that while the Manimekalai reveals familiarity with—and in fact explicitly draws from—the Therigatha in its characterization of the heroine, the Tamil epic differs in ways peculiar to the cultural and social milieu of Tamil country.