Ambapali was a courtesan — a ganika, a woman of high status and no respectability — and the episode is preserved in the account of the Buddha's final journey. She invited him to a meal; the Licchavi nobles arrived shortly after with the same request and offered her a large sum to trade places; she refused, saying she would not give it up for the whole city and everything in it. He went to her. She later donated her mango grove to the order and ordained, and verses attributed to her survive in the Therigatha, in which she describes her own aging body line by line as a teaching on impermanence.