Kalmāṣapāda

Accounts vary by source. In a recension summarized from the Mahābhārata, the sage Śakti curses the king to wander the forest for sixteen years, and the sage Viśvāmitra sends a rakshasa named Kinkara to possess the king's body, producing cannibalistic behaviour. In alternate accounts (Uttara Rāmāyaṇa, Śiva Purāṇa, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and some Purāṇas) the sequence is that Kalmāṣapāda mistakenly kills a rakshasa in the form of a tiger cub; a vengeful rakshasa then disguises itself as the sage and deceives the king into offering meat to Vasiṣṭha, who feeling insulted curses the king to become a rakshasa. Some recensions add that Vasiṣṭha later reduces the term of wandering (e.g., from sixteen to twelve years). The figure is also integrated into royal genealogies as an ancestor of Rāma; the variant names Saudāsa, Mitrasaha, and Amitrasaha are glossed in Purāṇic commentary as reflecting forbearance toward friend or foe and derive from the curse narrative.

Narrative sources provide little systematic physical description beyond behaviour. The most specific attested physical detail is that, after the episode involving casting curse‑laden water, the king's feet become black and white in colour, giving rise to the epithets Kalmāṣapāda and Kalmasanghri ('pied feet'). Otherwise he is described in terms of his rakshasa behaviour (flesh‑eating, roaming the forest) rather than distinct bodily features in the quoted passages.

Sources attribute to Kalmāṣapāda the characteristic behaviors of a rakshasa as narrated in the epics and Purāṇas: he eats human flesh (the Mahābhārata explicitly states he eats Śakti and his ninety‑nine brothers), wanders the forest during the cursed period (durations vary across accounts), cultivates violent hatred toward Vasiṣṭha and his sons and acts to destroy them, and in narrative fragments is said to disturb a Brahmin couple in the forest. Causation is presented variously: some texts frame his condition as a direct transformation induced by a sage's curse (Śakti or Vasiṣṭha), while other accounts describe possession by a rakshasa sent by Viśvāmitra (Kinkara); the traditions thus depict both metamorphosis and demonic possession as mechanisms.