Araja: When a Girl Is Raped

Women’s safety is a major issue across the world today. India has become notorious as one of the most unsafe places for women. Our print and electronic media are filled with news of rape and other forms of violence against woman, at least some of which shake the very conscience of the nation. We wake up every morning to hear reports of very young children being subjected to sexual atrocities. In such times, this story of a young girl raped brutally and destroyed by a power-intoxicated man and the consequences of that dastardly act that ancient India tells us can perhaps function as a warning to all of us.

The story is of Araja.

Araja could be her name. It could also be a description of what, or how old, she was. The word arajaa means one without impurity – from the word rajas, meaning impurity. Rajas could also mean many other things, including a woman’s monthly period, which would make the word Araja mean a girl who has not yet reached puberty. A prepubescent girl.

She was the older daughter of Shukracharya, the elder sister of Devayani famous in stories that relate her to Brihaspati’s son Kacha, to the asura emperor Vrishaparva’s daughter Sharmishtha and to Emperor Yayati. When the story happened, Devayani could have been just a child, or maybe she was not yet born.

On that day young Araja was all alone in the forest close to her father’s ashram. The spring had touched the forest a couple of weeks ago and its magic had transformed every tree. The wild mango trees seemed to be dancing in the wind that was pregnant with the fragrance of champaka flowers. Both the bakula and karnikara trees filled the not very dence forest with their intoxicating scents.

Araja loved the palasha groves and bamboo thickets where she sometimes spent hours. On the bank of the small stream that flowed singing a song that only the birds and wild animals understood, there were several thickets of ketaki bushes, their stems full of thorns, the trees avoided by all because of the snakes that abounded in the thickets when the divine fragrance that emanated from their golden leaves could be smelt half a mile away and drew people irresistibly to them. Here and there stood a bilva and peepal from which it was Araja’s proud job to collect leaves for the sacred rituals her father seemed to be always practicing. A young peacock followed the adolescent girl wherever she went, every now and then pausing in its walk, raising its head high and sending its long call to the heart of the forest – the peacock lived in the ashram, along with several deer and numerous other animals.

Young Araja was lost in the sweetness of the call of a cuckoo perched on a jambu tree when she was suddenly awakened by the awareness of someone close to her – a stranger.

The man was tall and handsome, powerfully built, very obviously a royal personage if not a king. His eyes were on her – and she realized, less on her face and eyes and more on her hips that had recently started spreading out under her clothes, her naked thin waist and on her chest that had just started budding. Araja pulled her clothes more tightly to her, which only seemed to interest the man more – a smile suddenly started spreading across his face.

He asked her who she was and why she was wandering alone in the forest.When she told him she was the daughter of Shukracharya, the place was safe because it is not too far from her father’s ashram, and she was collecting sacred leaves and flowers for his worship, his eyes glowed. With his smile broadening further, he told her Shukra was his royal priest. “I give him profuse dakshina and it is on that dakshina that the acharya lives.”

Araja stared at him, not liking his tone. She did not like anyone slighting her father. Her father was no ordinary priest – he was the chief priest of the asuras and even the gods feared him. As for the dakshina, her father’s powers were such that if he wanted he could command the god of wealth himself to give him as much of it as he wanted.

“I am King Dandaka, youngest son of Emperor Ikshwaku, grandson of Manu, great grandson of the first king on earth, Vivaswan, and all that is in this vast land south of the Vindhyas belongs to me. And that includes all the people who live here too.” He paused for a moment and added with a smile, “So, little girl, you are standing on my land this very moment and you belong to me too!”

Araja did not say anything. She did not feel like talking to such an arrogant man. She had met many kings in the past, they came to her father’s ashram every now and then, in their powerful chariots, but they were always humble, particularly around the ashram and before her father. They invariably stopped the chariot some distance away and alighting, came walking, usually barefoot, to her father, Most of them dared not even sit in his presence even when he insisted and almost all of them touched her father’s feet with their crowned heads, calling him their guru.

“You are very beautiful,” said King Danda. “My royal apartments are full of pretty women but I do not think anyone of them has the beauty you have – at least not as much as you would soon have, once your body blossoms fully. You are only a bud now, but I love buds more than flowers.”

The king stood appraising her with his eyes.

“I love you, pretty girl. Watching you, I am not able to control my desire for you. It is as though if I do not have you, I would explode.How about becoming my queen? I have hundreds of them in my inner apartments. The king has an exclusive right over all that is best within the kingdom. So that is where a precious jewel like you belong.”

The king spread out his arms and invited the confused little girl into them. She stood unmoving and then he started taking steps closer to her.

Araja started shivering in dread. “Don’t you do anything to me, rajan,” she said. “I am your guruputri and like a sister to you.”

His steps only became steadier as he laughed aloud at her words, his mirth spreading them in the wind.

“Let me make you mine,” said Danda. “Now. This very moment! You fill me with such desire.”

“If you need me you must ask my father,” said Araja. “I belong to him, and to anyone he gives me to. If your intentions are good, wait, the ashram is close by, ask him. But if your intentions are not good, remember, my father is the guru of all the asuras and before his awesome power, the world of the devas and asuras and the whole earth trembles. Don’t do anything foolish, I beg you, rajan. Touching me without my father’s permission will destroy you. Just because you are the king of this land, don’t think you can do anything. He can reduce you to ashes in a split second with his ascetic power.”

Her voice rose in the urgency and despair of her speech and became almost a yell. A strange dread that she had never known before possessed her. She wanted to scream and yet no sound came out of her mouth. She wanted to turn around and run, but her limbs would not move. All on a sudden, it was as though it was all a nightmare, she was in a nightmare, the surroundings of the ashram were part of some unspeakable horror she was experiencing in a horrid sleep . How else could something as horrible as this be happening to her – that too so close to her father’s ashram where all her life she had known no fear, where even dreaded animals became peaceful because of the spiritual power of her father, where every tree and bush was her friend?

She fought desperately with her dread and with a tremendous effort of will pulled her body out of the stupefaction in which it was frozen and turned around and ran. It was then that Danda caught her by her hair and pulled her to him. She pushed him away with all her might, but the little girl was no match to the raw male power of the mighty king in his mature age.

Her fight intoxicated him. Fresh energy shot through all his limbs and he held her tightly to him by one hand, still clutching her hair by the other hand.As she pushed at him with all her little strength, he slapped her hard on her cheek, releasing her hair at the same time, the blow sending her to the ground.

The next moment he was on her, pulling her clothes away from her, kissing her lips, kissing all over her face, kissing her shoulders, kissing the buds of her breasts in the frenzy of his lust that had suddenly grown insane. A violent scream that rushed out of her could barely leave her as he, now lying on top of her, smothered it with his left hand, while spreading her legs with his right hand. She tried to clutch her legs together, but he was already between them and thrusting violently.

A blood curdling scream arose from the depths of her being as he held her pressed down to the ground and tore into her, violating her brutally.

The forest stood still. The birds and animals had stopped breathing. The trees no more danced in the wind. Even the nearby stream seemed to have ceased to flow.

Then the peacock raised its head and cried violently. The monkeys perched on trees nearby started screeching. An owl, woken up from his sleep, hooted ominously, his deep voice booming. Form the distance came peals of laughter – hyenas.

And the next moment the whole jungle exploded with a thousand angry, fierce sounds. Elephants trumpeted furiously. The roar of a lion filled the forest. The stream rushed forward with violence in its movements. A hundred sleeping owls suddenly woke up and filled the jungle with their blood curdling hoots. A hundred peacocks raised their head and opening their beaks wide, began to cry without stopping. The vultures perched on a dry tree screeched, and spreading their wings took off into the air, their shadows falling over the king and the young girl. A dark-furred giant bear stood on its back legs, a shocked expression in his eyes, and watched, his mouth open.

The whole forest was shocked and protested in ferocious anger. Everything that was sacred in the jungle was shorn into shreds. Like a violent whirlpool, the jungle was at once restless and still.

The girl kept screaming.

And then King Danda was finished with the tender body of the young girl, his lust satiated for the moment. He let go of it, discarded it, fouled and bloody, like the leftover meat that a lion abandons and walks away because he has had his fill.

The jungle had grown silent again. Not a sound anywhere.

In the middle of that silence, the young girl tried to get up and sit down but failed collapsed on the ground. It was as though her body no more belonged to her. And perhaps it did not – she no more felt any ownership towards it. It was no more her body. It was a body that used to be hers, a body that had belonged to her all her short life until now, but no more. She felt totally alienated from it, wanted it no more, it had become a repulsive thing for her, abhorrent, she wanted to get away from it, discard it right there in the middle of the jungle and walk away, which of course she could not. She did not want to carry it into the sacred ashram that was her home, at least used to be her home. She felt polluted and felt if she entered the ashram she would pollute it too. For she was a disgusting, repulsive thing now, gross and sickening, loathsome.  

It was a group of young disciples of the Acharya who had come there running that found her there, and from the words that she wrenched out of herself learnt what had happened. “King Danda…. King Danda…King Danda… He…He…Me… Me…”

Her eyes were on her blood-soaked clothes that remained stuck to her thighs.

Shukracharya’s body shook violently when he heard the words of his young disciples. His eyes spat fire. He ran to where his young daughter lay, hardly in touch with the world, her lips whimpering words that no one could make out, her eyes unseeing. Her body convulsed every now and then, becoming taught like a bow stringed and pulled, and then, after the convulsion, totally spent, without any energy, more dead than alive.

The only man in the world whom even the mighty gods dreaded stood in helpless fury as he watched his young daughter lying bathed in blood. He had failed. He was supposed to be the protector of the asuras, those men of boundless power who ruled much of the earth, at one time the whole earth, and he had failed to protect his own daughter! Shukra who wielded power beyond imagination, who could bring the dead back to life, who could change young men into old ones and give eternal youth to whom he wanted, who could command the earth and the heavens, storms and rains, at whose command mountains moved and oceans dried up – there was nothing he could do for his own daughter, the little girl whom he loved more dearly than his own life.

Time couldn’t be turned back.

The earth under his feet was scorched by the fire of anger in him. Each teardrop that fell from his eyes became fire as it touched the earth and rose up in flames. He wanted to destroy the whole earth.

Using the years of tapas he had practiced, using his superhuman powers, Shukracharya mastered himself. No, he will not destroy the earth. For the sin of one person, he will not destroy the whole vast earth, the mother of all beings. But he would destroy the king, destroy his land. All that is on that land would perish. It is the law, the eternal law. When a king commits sin, the whole kingdom is destroyed. Just as one part of everything, good and bad, that the subjects do goes to the king, the subjects too pay for the kings sins. The part of the earth of which he is the master too suffers with him and his people for his sins.

King Danda was doomed. His kingdom and all its people were doomed for the sin he had committed. And the very land shall pay the price.

“I, Kavi Ushana, Acharya Shukra, the guru of the asuras, curse you, rajan, on the strength of the life of tapas that I have lived all my life,” said the great ascetic, the maha-yogi, filling his palm with water from his kamandalu, “Know that for the next seven days fierce winds will blow through your entire land. Burning winds shall blow for seven days without relief, raising duststorms across your kingdom. Trees will be uprooted, mountains will split open, rivers will dry up, the earth will crack open, opening up deep ravines everywhere. No tree will remain in its place, not a mountain, not a river, not a lake, nothing. No living being within the kingdom, be it human, animal, bird or whatever, shall be spared. Everything will be choked to death by the wind and the dust it raises. There will be no air to breathe for any living being. The dust storm will blow nonstop for seven days, at the end of which dust will settle on everything. The entire kingdom will be buried in dust for ages, nothing living shall breathe in your kingdom. Nothing will grow – no trees, no bushes, not even grass.  Yours will be the kind of land the earth has not known in the past. For ages it will lie choked by dust. Nothing will walk or crawl upon it. Even birds will dread to fly over it. There will be not a drop of water to drink for anyone, no air to breathe, the earth shall scorch, scorching the dust above it. And when your kingdom comes back after ages, it will be known as the Dandaka forest, where daylight will dread to enter. Filled with monstrous trees and animals, with marshes and creatures of the marsh, man will avoid it by miles.”

And that is how it was. That is what passed.

All over Danda’s vast land, hell fire rose up from the earth. First the grass and plants and then the tress and vines caught fire and burnt to ashes. All the rivers and lakes and ponds began drying up, killing everything in them. The mountains shook and crumbled. Dust rose up from the scorched earth. Fierce dust storms began howling through the kingdom, moving at speeds no one had ever known, a hundred miles an hour, two hundred miles an hour, three hundred miles an hour. People couldn’t see anything because of the dust, couldn’t breathe because all they could breathe in was dust that choked them with every breath. People took shelter inside their homes, but soon the houses crumbled, killing them with it. Birds and beasts and all that crawled on the ground perished as did all life in water.

Seven days of pure hell! An unending eternity of hell!  By the end of which a vast land that was filled with magnificent cities, luxurious homes and rich palaces had been wiped out for ever and ever. The lush vegetation of the kingdom of Danda, its thick forests, farms, gardens, rivers, lakes, were all a thing of the past. All that remained was a kingdom of dust, an endless desert of dust, with no life in it.

The kingdom of Danda no more existed.

A woman raped by the man whose duty it was to protect her, and a kingdom wiped out from the face of the earth.

Centuries passed and slowly life, irrepressible life, began claiming the land back once again. Grass sprouted here and there, then small plants and trees, then insects, birds and beasts… Slowly life came back after long ages and the land began to be occupied again. By rakshasas. And then by a few ascetics here and there who mostly ended up as food for the rakshasas.

This is the Dandakaranya of the Ramayana fame – into which Rama was exiled for fourteen years by his angry stepmother Kaikeyi.

To me here, in this story, Shukracharya is not just the father of Araja and a great ascetic but the very hand of the power that controls the universe and rightly rewards us for our actions, good and bad – call it niyati, call it dharma, call it destiny, call it God.  

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Uttara Ramayana: How Jaimini Tells It

In an earlier article of mine available online [Retelling the Ramayana: How Padma Purana Does It], I discussed how differently the author of Padma Purana tells the story of Rama from how Valmiki does it. Reading the Jaiminiya Ashwamedha Parva recently, I was fascinated by the changes its author makes when he tells the Uttara Ramayana story.

The context is of the narration of the Ashwamedha battle between Arjuna and his son Babhruvahana. While describing the battle to Janamejaya, the author-narrator Jaimini compares it to the similar battle between Rama and his son Kusha. This prompts Janamejaya to ask for the details of the battle between Rama and Kusha and Jaimini responds by narrating the story at length, devoting twelve of the total sixty-eight chapters of the book to it.

Jaimini
After returning from his fourteen year exile, says Jaimini, Rama begins ruling Ayodhya. Years pass and yet Sita does not conceive – the duration mentioned by Jaimini is ten thousand years, whatever he means by it. Eventually she conceives and completes four months of pregnancy. It is when she is in the fifth month that Rama has a terrible dream. In his dream Rama sees that Lakshmana has abandoned Sita on the banks of the Ganga and she is weeping there like an orphaned child. Next morning he informs Vasishtha of his dream and requests the sage to fix a date for the pumsavana ritual, so that the pregnancy is completed without any trouble. Vasishtha fixes a date in the next fortnight. Accordingly Rama gives orders to Lakshmana to invite Sita’s father Janaka and sages like Vishwamitra for the ceremony. They arrive and the pumsavana is royally performed. Following the ritual, Janaka hands over his kingdom to Rama and retires to the forest for devoting his whole life for spiritual practices.

It is one night following this while Rama and Sita are in bed that Rama asks his wife about her daurhrida [dohada – the pregnant woman’s wish]. Sita tells him that by his grace she has no desires, all her desires are fulfilled, but there is one thing she is keen to do: visit the ashrams of ascetics on the banks of the Ganga.

Rama spontaneously bursts out laughing at this – a thing we cannot imagine Valmiki’s Rama doing. Laughing aloud he asks her if fourteen years of life in the jungle hasn’t satisfied her. He then promises her that she shall visit the banks of the Ganga the very next morning.

We can see clearly here that Jaimini is already taking an independent road in telling the Uttara Katha of Rama. Things are quite different in the Valmiki Ramayana. In the older telling of the story by the Adikavi, the prophetic dream Rama sees about Sita being abandoned in the forest is missing, and so is the pumsavana ritual. Naturally, Janaka does not come to Ayodhya to attend it nor does he hand over Mithila to Rama to rule over and retire to the forest for tapas. Rama asks Sita about her dohada not when they are in bed together, but in entirely different circumstances.

Valmiki
In Valmiki’s version, following his return from the exile and coronation as king, we find Rama and Sita in each other’s company in an atmosphere of love in the Ashoka Gardens on the palace grounds, a place filled with all kinds of beautiful trees. There are ponds in the garden, filled with acquatic flowers and abounding in chakravakas, swans, cranes, storks and all other kinds of birds that flock around water. Seated on a couch in the Ashoka Vanika, Rama lovingly gives Sita with his own hand a beverage called madhu-maireyaka to drink, just as Indra gives Shachi drinks. Servants bring varieties of meat and fruits. Naga women, Kinnaris and Apsaras, all pretty, all adepts at dance, all well adorned, dance around Rama, very close to him. The dancing women are inebriated and Rama enjoys their dances thoroughly. Seated with Sita, Rama looks as though Vasishtha is sitting with Arundhati.

Valmiki then tells us that Rama used to spend the first half of his days attending to his religious and royal duties and the second half, in the company of Sita like this for a long time, until winter passes. [The commentator Govindaraja explains a statement of the Advikavi here to mean that two winters thus passed after the coronation.] It is then that one day he notices signs of pregnancy on Sita. He is delighted and asks her what her dohada is – a pregnant woman’s desires should be fulfilled; what desire of hers can he fulfill? Sita smiles and tells him of her desire to visit the sacred tapovanas of the great sages on the banks of the Ganga and to sit at their feet. She wants to spend at least one night in the holy groves where these ascetics practice tapas. Rama happily promises that her desire will be fulfilled the very next day.

It is interesting to take a look at some of the changes introduced by Jaimini in his narration. Both Valmiki and Jaimini are portraying Rama’s great love and care for Sita. Valmiki speaks of their evenings together when Rama gives her drinks, meat is served and beautiful inebriated women dance around the couple. This is characteristic of Valmiki who is not shy of speaking of such things. Speaking of the scene of Ravana’s antahpura, for instance, the sage-poet unabashedly paints the picture of a post-orgasmic scene there, where few things are left to the imagination. Similarly in the Aranya Kanda he speaks of Rama giving a piece of cooked meat to Sita and asking her to try it, telling her it is good to eat, it is tasty and it is well-roasted – idam medhyam, idam swādu, nishṭaptam idam agninā. Sage Bharadwaj too offers the soldiers of Bharata passing through his ashram both meat and drinks, along with other kinds of food and drinks. However, by the time of Jaimini perhaps these things had become unacceptable in the case of holy men and women like Rama and Sita, and the poet omits these details. There is no meat eating mentioned in this context, no intoxicating drinks, and no dance. He chooses other incidents to portray their intimacy. For instance, Rama’s spontaneous laughter at Sita’s desire to visit the forest again. That is a very intimate action. Rama also has the precognitive dream of Sita being abandoned – the kind of dream a loving person deeply concerned with another is likely to have. His interpretation of it is that something evil is going to happen to her pregnancy and he does what he thinks is appropriate – conducting a Vedic ritual to safeguard the pregnancy and Sita.

Jaimini
Following the promise he makes to Sita that she shall visit the ashram the next day, later that night, Jaimini tells us, Rama receives his spies and listens to the reports of each separately. The reports are all good. When Rama presses them, though, one of them admits that he has heard something negative too. The wife of a washerman had left her husband and gone away to her father’s place where she stayed for four days. The father then realizes that it is wrong for him to keep his married daughter at home for such a long period and, accompanied by his brothers, he takes her back to her husband. The furious washerman shouts at them, “Do you think I am Rama? He can accept back Sita who stayed in the house of the Rakshasas, but I will not.”

Rama sends the spy away and starts reflecting on his words. He ponders over what he should do. How can he abandon Sita whose purity has been proved by fire? No, he cannot, just as an educated brahmana cannot give up good conduct. Or maybe he should give her up, like brahmanas in the Kali age who give up the Vedas. By the morning, he makes up his mind to abandon Sita.

Early next morning his brothers meet Rama. Rama tells him all that happened in the night and informs them of his decision to abandon Sita out of fear for the censure of the world - lokabhaya.

The brothers are shocked. It is Bharata who speaks first. He reminds Rama of Sita’s purity which she has proved by entering fire. He also reminds Rama of Dasharatha’s words on that occasion. Dasharatha had appeared in the skies and told Rama not only that Sit is pure but also that she is capable of purifying others by her presence. In fact, Dasharatha had said then, he should not have been admitted into heaven because he had died grieving for his son, but it was because of his daughter-in-law Sita’s purity that he was admitted into the heaven. Bharata reminds Rama that the gods too had vouched for Sita’s purity.

Rama admits that it is all true; Sita’s purity is beyond doubt. But what is he to do with this evil talk that is going on? How can he put an end to it? For a king, there is nothing worse than ill fame and nothing more desirable than kirti, yashas – righteous fame. One should give up those who cause ill fame – be it a son, a brother, or a wife.

Here Rama quotes a few examples from the past, of people who had made great sacrifices for the sake of righteous fame. One of them is the highly anachronistic example of Karna ‘long ago’ giving away his armour and ear rings to Indra.

tathaiva kavacam karno vāsavāya dadau purā - Jaimini 27.23

Lakshmana has difficulty in controlling his anger now. Waving his arms in fury, he tells Rama that his action is like giving up one’s own mother, like saving a cow from mlecchas and then abandoning it saying it has been touched by mlecchas and has hence become impure.

Shatrughna is equally furious at what Rama has said. He tells Rama he should carry out what he says and kill himself – that will make him immortal. And Sita is such, and her love for Rama is such, that she will bring him back from death. But, he asks Rama, how will he bring a dead Sita back to life? He implies that Rama is not capable of doing that, his love for her is not so powerful.

Rama’s only response is to say that his fear for ill-fame is such that if necessary he will give up himself and them, his brothers, what to speak of Sita.

Finding Rama bent on giving up Sita, Bharata and Shatrugha do not wish to stay with him anymore and go to their own palaces. Lakshmana however is not able to do so, seeing Rama’s grief. Rama tells him either to chop off his, Rama’s, head or to carry out his order and abandon Sita in the jungle. “I touch your feet and beg you,” Rama tells Lakshmana. “Abandon Sita on the bank of the river in the jungle. That sin will come to me.”

These words of Rama shames Lakshmana. He remembers the injunction of the scriptures that one should always obey the orders of one’s elders. He remembers how Parashurama had cut off his mother’s head obeying the orders of his father Jamadagni. He orders his driver to get his chariot ready and goes by it to Sita’s house, his head hung heavy in pain.

Here Jaimini adds something beautiful: the horse collapses on the way and has to be brutally whipped to get up and proceed.

Seeing him bowing to her in her palace, Sita is delighted. He praises Rama’s generosity: he is fulfilling what she had asked for in the night, though she had said it in a light mood. She tells Lakshmana she will take gifts for the sages and their wives. Her words torment Lakshmana, but he remembers his duty to Rama and silently responds by saying all right, his head bent, tears flowing from his eyes.

Sita takes leave of Kausalya as well as Kaikeyi and Sumitra and happily boards the chariot. With a choked voice Lakshmana orders the charioteer to drive fast.

Valmiki
In Valmiki’s Ramayana, it is not from his spies that Rama hears of the evil talk about Sita, but from his friends. As usual he was sitting with his friends in his chamber that night listening to all kinds of humorous stories told by them. After a while he asks Bhadra, a friend, to tell him what the citizens are saying about him and his family. Initially Bhadra tells him of the wonderful things they say, but when Rama insists he tells him of what they are saying about Sita – or more precisely, about his continuing to keep Sita as his wife. “What joy can Rama’s heart have from enjoying Sita who was forcibly taken into his lap by Ravana? Ravana had taken her with him to Lanka and kept her there in his Ashoka Gardens. Why does he not reject her? Now we too will have to tolerate such behaviour from our wives.” Such is the talk going on in the towns and in all the villages, Bhadra tells Rama. Rama asks his other friends if this is true, and they all admit it is so.

So in Valmiki’s version, it is not just one washerman who talks maliciously of Sita, but there is wide talk of that nature in all towns and villages. As I point out in my article on the Padma Purana version of the Ramayana, there the author goes further and gives a reason for that washerman. In his previous lifetime, he was a parrot and Sita had separated him and his wife, and caged her. The female parrot had killed herself in the cage when Sita refused to release her, and the male parrot had jumped into the Ganga and killed himself, cursing Sita that she too will later be separated from her husband. Thus to the Padma Purana it is Sita’s past karma haunting her now. We all have to pay the price of what we do, whoever we are. Karma is inviolable.

To continue the story as Valmiki tells it, after dismissing his friends, Rama sends for his brothers in the night itself. When they come, he talks to them about how nothing is more important than one’s good name and how nothing in the world is worse than ill fame. He asks Lakshmana to take Sita and leave her in the jungle beyond the Ganga near the ashrams and tells his brothers if anyone spoke against his decision, he would treat him as his enemy forever.

Valmiki’s Rama does not allow his brothers to speak a word against him. He gives them no choice. Jaimini’s Rama is equally determined about abandoning Sita, but he at least listens to his brothers’ angry talk. Jaimini’s Rama shames Lakshmana into obedience by saying that he is requesting his younger brother by touching his feet. The emotional force used by Jaimini’s Rama is different too – he asks Lakshmana to chop his head off, if he will not obey him. Valmiki’s Rama appears more hard-hearted when he says whoever speaks a word against his decision will become his enemy forever.

Valmiki’s Lakshmana goes to Sita the next morning with his chariot to take her and abandon her. But he lies to Sita – he specifically tells her he is taking her to the hermitages of the ascetics on the orders of Rama, as desired by her. She picks up gifts for the sages and happily starts her journey.

Jaimini
Let’s now go back to Jaimini.

As the chariot proceeds, Sita sees evil omens everywhere. A female jackal comes before Sita and begins howling piteously. Flocks of deer are seen running helter-skelter in large numbers. And Sita’s right eye begins to flutter continuously. Sita suspects bad things – but not for herself. She prays for the good of Rama, so that no harm comes to him.

When the chariot reaches the Ganga, the river that destroys sins is in a spate. Lakshmana gets down from the chariot and takes her across the river by a ferry. On the other side, both Sita and Lakshmana take a bath in the Ganga and then proceed on foot into deeper jungles. Jaimini paints a dark picture of the terrifying jungle here – there are sharp thorns everywhere, there are ancient trees on which are perched crows which are being eaten by snakes that hiss constantly. The place is filled with cheetahs, bison, wild boars and black scorpions with raised tails. Tigers wait still looking for opportunities to pounce upon does. Wild cats are digging mice out of their holes.

Fear makes Sita’s hairs stand on their ends. “I do not see any ashrams here, Lakshmana; nor do I see any sages or their wives,” she tells her devar. “There are no ashram children running about either. I do not see smoke rising up from agnihotras. What I see instead is smoke rising from wild fires burning forest grass and trees. Instead of the sound of Vedic mantras, I hear the wild cries of forest birds.”

Such is Sita’s innocence that she puts the blame for it all on herself. Perhaps this is her punishment for turning away from Rama by desiring to visit the ashrams. She is indeed an ugly woman who does not deserve to see the sacred ashrams. The auspicious ashram sounds and sights are not for her.

Tears streaming down from his eyes, Lakshmana tells Sita that the ashrams are still far away. He then informs her how she has been abandoned by Rama out of fear for the censure of the world – loka-apavada-bhaya.

Sita hears those words and collapses on the ground like a star falling from the skies. It was as though she has been bitten by a deadly snake. Lakshmana fans her with the end of his cloth and she comes to and sitting up, asks Lakshmana, “Once you had left me alone in Janasthana and went away. How will you again leave me in this terrible forest and go away?”

She tells Lakshmana how he is the dearest of her devars, brothers-in-law, and recalls one by one his acts of love and devotion to her. She does not blame Rama for abandoning her for no fault of hers – it must be her karma from a past life time. She asks Lakshmana to hurry back, or else Rama might get angry with him for being late. As for her, the god who protected her in the womb and protected her in Lanka will protect her in the forest too. She gives messages of love and devotion to her mothers-in-law to Lakshmana.

Sita has only one complaint against Rama – he should not have entrusted the tender hearted Lakshmana with the work of abandoning her in the jungle. He should have asked someone like the hard hearted Sugriva, slayer of his own brother, or Vibhishana who turned against his own brother, to do that job. She gives her blessings to Lakshmana and asks him to leave her and go back. Lakshmana goes round her in reverence and praying to the forest gods and goddesses to protect her, begins walking away and finds his legs are refusing to carry him away from Sita. Sita looks on at the disappearing Lakshmana and hopes perhaps he would return. When she finds that he does not, she swoons again.

The Jaiminiya Ashwamedha Parva turns eloquent here in describing the sympathy of the forest for Sita. It describes how swans give up lotus stalks and start wailing in their harsh voices. The does and their babies give up feeding on grass and raising their heads stall still watching Sita lying in a swoon. Peacocks give up their dances and run towards her. Birds stop searching for food and instead spread their wings and protect Sita lying on the forest floor. Water fowls sprinkle water on her with their wings. The chamaris fan her with their chamara-like hairy tails. The wind takes a dip in the Ganga and then gathering the flowers lying around, showers them on Sita in an act of worship.

Sita wakes up taking Rama’s name. Because of contorting in pain as she lay in swoon, her hair is open now and like the rest of her body, it is covered in dust. Her first impulse is to end her life, but that would be the great sin of bhroonahatya – killing an embryo in the womb. Not knowing what else to do, she runs first in one direction, then in another, falling every now and then in her agony and loneliness. Her feet start to bleed from running in the thorn-filled and rough forest floor and from falling down repeatedly.

It is in this state that Sage Valmiki finds her in the jungle while he is roaming there along with his disciples looking for wood appropriate for a sacrificial pillar.

Valmiki
Jaimini differs from Valmiki in where Sita is left. In Valmiki Ramayana, Rama’s instructions are to leave Sita at some lonely place near Valmiki Ashram and that is precisely what Lakshmana does. In fact it is possible that from where Sita was left the ashram was visible and Sita was visible from the ashram too. For, Lakshmana says to Sita when they reach there:

āśramānteṣu ca mayā tyaktavyā tvam bhaviṣyasi
rājnah śāsanam ājnāya tava evam kila daurhṛdam
tadetajjāhnavī tīre brahmaṛṣīṇām tapovanam
puṇyam ca ramaṇīyam ca mā viṣādam kṛthāh śubhe

“Obeying the order of the king and as per your pregnancy wish, I am to abandon you near the ashram. Here is the sacred and beautiful tapovana of the brahmarshis on the banks of the Ganga. Do not grieve.”


Jaimini changes this and there is no indication that it is near the ashram that she is left. In fact, there are all kinds of contrary indications. Sita complains that she does not see any ashrams there, nor any sages nor their wives. She speaks of seeing no ashram children running about, seeing no smoke rising up from agnihotras. All she sees is smoke rising from wild fires burning forest grass and trees. Instead of Vedic mantras, she points out, all she hears is the wild cries of forest birds.

Jaimini’s forest is also not the gentle forest near ashrams – what we find everywhere is sharp thorns, ancient trees on which are perched crows who are being hunted by hissing snakes, and the forest floor filled with cheetahs, bison, wild boars, black scorpions with raised tails, tigers waiting to pounce upon does, cats digging mice out of their holes.

In Valmiki she is so close to the ashram the young ashram children see and hear her cries and inform the sage of her. Sita here has no consolation of being anywhere near ashrams. And she runs about madly in intolerable agony, first running in one direction and then in another. It is in this state that Valmiki who is looking for wood for making a sacrificial post finds her in Jaimini.

Also, in Jaimini, it is the fear of bhroonahatya – the sin of killing the children in her womb – that prevents Sita from killing herself. In Valmiki it is the fear that with it Rama’s ancient royal line will come to an end.

Summing Up
Summing up the differences so far, Jaimini in spite of being a lover of Rama, is quite critical of his action of abandoning Sita. He makes Rama himself compare his action to that of the brahmanas of Kaliyuga giving up the Vedas – when the brahmanas who are supposed to live for protecting the Vedas give them up, it is always for unholy purposes, for selfish ends. Jaimini does not see Rama’s fear of lokapavada – the censure of the world – as anything noble. Like so many of us today, he perhaps feels Rama took the easy way out. Instead of standing by Sita and fighting for her like a hero and making the people of Ayodhya realize their error, he chose to get rid of her so that he can be in their good books. He definitely was not setting up a good example before the world, just as a brahmana who gives up the Vedas is not, whatever his reason.

Jaimini makes Sita say that the god who protected her in the womb and in Lanka will protect her in the forest too.

yo garbhe rakṣitā devo yo vai lankādhivāsinīm
mām sa vai rakṣitā cādya na duhkham kartumarhasi.

These are the words of a woman who has been given up by the very man who is supposed to protect her. In fact, it is he who has thrown her into the middle of dangers. These words remind us of Draupadi, wagered and lost by Yudhishthira and thus made a slave, turning to God in the form of Krishna for protection, when they fail her.

In one of the most eloquent expressions of kindness and compassion the world has seen, Jesus from the cross asks God to forgive his tormentors and crucifiers. Valmiki’s Sita does the same, a few thousand years before Jesus. And Sita does not ask Rama just to forgive those who have been cruel to her, but going beyond it, to actively love them.

Valmiki’s Sita thus asks Rama to love the people of Ayodhya who have sent her to the jungle; and not love them with the common love of a king for his subjects, but as Rama loves his brothers – he loves no one more than he loves his brothers, not even her. This is loving your enemies in the truest sense of the term. She asks Rama to love her tormentors, her crucifiers, with all his heart.

And when she does not kill herself by jumping into the Ganga, it is because she does not want Rama’s line to come to an end with her.

Valmiki’s Sita is almost superhuman in her compassion and kindness. But Jaimini brings her down to the earth, without reducing her in any way. She is so tormented by her fear and agony – it is not near the ashram that she has been abandoned, but in a terrifying jungle with scorpions and snakes and cheetahs and wild boars all around her – that she has no thoughts for the citizens of Ayodhya. And we can understand Sita if she refuses to kill herself out of the fear for bhroonahatya rather than out of the fear of loss that it will cause Rama. She is just being human there. Perhaps the thought that when she kills herself Rama will lose something does not occur to her at that moment.

~*~

To be continued...

Parashurama: When Absolute Power Corrupts

This is a story we are all familiar with in India. For ages, every Indian child has grown up listening to it, usually from his mother or grandmother, or father or grandfather, and at times from a professional storyteller in a temple or on the village grounds – and the more recent generations from their Amar Chitra Kathas or the television serials.

In a display of valour and strength, Rama has broken Shiva’s bow that had been in the family of Janaka, thus winning Sita in marriage. The wedding is over and he is on his way back from Mithila, Sita’s place, to Ayodhya. The group returning consists of the sage Vasishtha, who is the royal guru of the Ikshwakus, a few other sages, Dasharatha himself, Rama and Sita as well as Rama’s three brothers and their brides. They are just out of Mithila when all on a sudden the sky begins to darken unexpectedly. Birds begin to shriek frightfully everywhere, some from the trees and some flying above the moving party, sending terror to the hearts of all – for they all know it is a dark omen. Confusing them further, they see deer crossing their path from the left – which is a good omen.

Soon there is no time left to analyse omens. For now the shrieks of the birds have become deafening and animals are running in a mad riot everywhere. The earth begins to shake. A storm begins and soon gathers speed and terrifying power. It pulls out mighty trees by their roots, with the ease of a mad elephant pulling up plants from the ground. The storm sends the trees whirling up into the sky and then hurls them down with stupefying force. The storm gathers dust from the earth and sends it up into the skies. The dust covers the sun and darkness envelops everything. No one is able to see anything. Under the impact of the storm, the whole army accompanying Dasharatha and all the servants and attendants with the party fall down unconscious. In the middle of it all, a few people are left standing: Sage Vasishtha and the other sages with him, Dasharatha, his four sons, the four new brides.

And then they see the cause of it all. Like a whirlwind, the dreaded ascetic-warrior Parashurama appears before them from nowhere. He is terrifying to look at. His eyes burn red and spit fire, his beard flows wildly in the wind, and his matted hair is tied up in a bun over his head.

Here is how Valmiki’s Ramayana describes him: “He was as unassailable as Mount Kailasa and as unbearable as the fire of annihilation. Blazing as he was with his effulgence, he was difficult to be seen by common people. With an axe resting on his right shoulder and a bow on his left, he held in his hand a spear that was like a bolt of lightning. Thus he resembled Shiva, the destroyer of the three cities of demons.”

The very name of Parashurama – Rama with the Battle Axe – is pure dread to every kshatriya. For this is the man who had went round the earth and wiped out every kshatriya in sight, not once, but twenty-one times. He needed vengeance and he needed justice. A kshatriya, a king – Kartaveerya Arjuna, also known as Arjuna with a Thousand Arms for his might – had, in his arrogance of power, desecrated his father’s ashram and he had killed him in a fierce battle that became a legend for all times to come. But the arrogant man’s sons sought vengeance for their father’s killing and finding a time when Parashurama’s father was alone in his ashram, had brutally killed him. It is then that Parashurama decides to wipe out kshatriyas from the earth – and wipe the earth clean of kshatriyas he does.

Power in itself is neither good nor evil. In the hands of the good, it becomes good, and in the hands of the bad, it becomes bad.

Power can turn you good, and power can turn you evil.

One of the ways power corrupts its possessor is by turning him arrogant. When the man who possesses power becomes arrogant, power becomes evil. And evil power has to be wiped out. If not, it will consume the earth itself. Rama with the Battle Axe made destroying such power his life mission. It is said that Rama’s righteous anger was calmed only when he filled five lakes in Kurukshetra – the Syamanta-panchaka – with the blood of kshatriyas and did tarpana to his manes with that blood.

Vasishtha quickly consults the other sages with him. Why has he come? Hasn’t his anger already been quenched a long time ago after he wiped out the warrior caste from the earth? Hasn’t he been meditating ever since on the Mahendra Mountains, living a hermit’s life?

Vasishtha and other sages take water in their sacred vessels – kamandalas – and approach the ascetic warrior who was standing blazing like the fire at the end of the world. They make the ritual offer of water to wash his hands and feet. Bowing down deeply to him, they try to appease him with soft words.

Parashurama accepts their offering of water but otherwise ignores them completely. Instead, he turns to young Rama.

0o0

As I write these lines, words from the Malayalam Ramayana that I listened to as a child come to my mind. There Rama begins his speech with these words: njanozhinchunto raman ittribhuvanattinkal? His powerful words, spat out in fury and contempt, question the right of another Rama apart from him to exist in all the three worlds.

Parashurama is one of the seven immortals of Indian legends. This warrior who decimated kshatriyas is a brahmana by birth, born to practice serenity and meditation, to study and teach the Vedas, and to perform sacrificial rites.

The ascetic-warrior whose mission it was to wipe out arrogant power from the face of the earth had himself become arrogant power.

The fiery ascetic-warrior turns to Rama and asks him, in the words of the Valmiki Ramayana: “O Rama, son of Dasharatha, I have heard of your wonderful prowess. I have heard all about how you broke Lord Shiva’s bow. It is inconceivable that someone could have broken that bow. Hearing of that, I have come here, bringing another excellent bow. To this awesome bow which was given to me by my father Jamadagni, fix an arrow and draw it. Show me your strength. After seeing your strength in drawing the bow, I shall offer you a fight which will give credit to your valor.”

Parashurama’s words shake Dasharatha with dread. His dear son, his heartbeat, young Rama, is just about sixteen years of age – a mere boy, a child. And the man standing before him is dread itself – the one who went around the earth and wiped out kshatriyas from the earth twenty-one times. No warrior has ever existed equal to him in might. And now he was challenging his young son.

Dasharatha rushes to Parashurama and bowed deeply to him. He says: “O glorious brahmana, after giving up your anger against the warrior caste and becoming pacified, you should assure the safety of my juvenile sons. Born in the line of the Bhargavas, who are distinguished in erudition and asceticism, you put down your weapons, promising so to Indra. You then dedicated yourself to piety, giving the earth to Kashyapa. Going to the forest, you took up residence on Mount Mahendra. You have come here to totally destroy me, O great sage. If you kill Rama, we shall all be unable to live.”

Rama of the Battle Axe does not so much as look at Dasharatha. He does not think the old king deserves an answer. He has slaughtered a thousand kings like Dasharatha, and so many of them have fallen at his feet and begged him to spare the lives of their children. He hadn’t listened to a single one of them, nor had he spared the life of a single male kshatriya, however young he was.

Ignoring the begging Dasharatha, he says to young Rama: “Two divine bows honored by the whole world are superb, firm, strong, outstanding and well-made by Vishvakarma. The first is the bow given by the gods to Lord Shiva when he wanted to fight the demon Tripura, which has now been broken by you, O descendant of Kakutstha. The second unassailable bow was given by the foremost gods to Lord Vishnu. This is that bow of Vishnu, O Rama, which can destroy the enemy’s stronghold. It is in fact equal in strength to Shiva’s bow.”

Parashurama then tells Rama the history of the bow and explains to him how it came to his family and eventually to him. He then commands Rama, binding him to his vows as a warrior, “Take this excellent bow. Put an arrow to it and draw it. If you are able to do so, I shall thereafter engage you in battle.”

Rama, who was silent all this while, speaks for the first time. With his first words he pays his respects to the aged ascetic-warrior brahmana. He commends him on what he did to avenge his father’s brutal killing by arrogant men. And then, he tells Parashurama that to prove that he is not worthy of the contempt in which the ascetic holds him, he will accept the challenge and prove himself.

What Parashurama had done was ask Rama to accept an impossible challenge. No man living, other than Parashurama himself, was capable of handling the bow Vishnu which he was asking Rama to draw.

Rama swiftly grabs the bow and arrow from the old ascetic. And the next instant he stands ready to shoot, the bow fully drawn and the arrow in place.

Having done the impossible in a flash, Rama again turns to Parashurama and speaks to him. And there is anger in his voice as he speaks to the ascetic-warrior. Rama says: “You deserve my worship because you are a brahmana, and also because of your kinship with Vishvamitra. Therefore, I cannot shoot the deadly arrow at you, O Parashurama. I shall therefore take away either your ability to move swiftly everywhere, or the unequaled worlds which you have attained by dint of your austerities—this is what I intend to do. This transcendental arrow of Lord Vishnu, which can crush an enemy’s stronghold or smash the pride of an adversary by its power, never misses its target.”

A humbled Parashurama now speaks slowly in his deep voice. He needs his power to move about, he says, and asks Rama to destroy the worlds he has gained through his austerities.

Rama shoots the arrow and the arrow empowered with great spiritual power destroys all the worlds Parashurama had acquired through his tapas. The old ascetic bows down in humility to Rama and then circumambulates him in an action reserved to those whom you revere at the highest level. He bows down to Dasharatha and the other ascetics too and returns to Mount Mahendra, his abode, to engage in tapas again. As he departs, says the Ramayana, all directions were cleared of darkness.

0o0

Through his victories, Parashurama had acquired absolute power. And absolute power can corrupt even the greatest of men. That is what had happened to Parashurama. His power went to his head, and he became what he had lived to destroy.

Every leader is in danger of being corrupted by power. Wisdom is to guard against this. For once power goes to your head, your doom is decided.

There is another lesson for all of us in this. Vengeance is tamasic. True, there are times when vengeance is right, and called for. But one has to guard oneself against the power of vengeance to turn one into those against whom one is taking vengeance.

Parashurama always had an element of tamas in him. Without that tamas, he would not have been able to carry out the order of his father to chop off the head of his mother – an order that all his four elder brothers had refused to obey. And then, seeking revenge for his father’s death, he kills not only the perpetrators of the crime, but all kshatriyas of the world. And not once, but twenty-one times. And fills five lakes with their blood. And filling five lakes with their blood, he offers a dark tarpana – a propitiatory rite – to his ancestors with that blood. That is deep, dark tamas indeed.

It is this tamasic power that the Ramayana describes graphically in terms of shrieking birds and running animals at the approach of Parashurama. The earth shakes, storms uproot mighty trees and hurl them about, dust storms arise and block the sun – all signs of the destructive power of sinister tamas.

Power and tamas – that is the most terrifying combination. That creates monsters. In modern times we have had this in leaders like Hitler and Stalin.

All of us, says the Gita, have an element of tamas in us. And we have to be on the guard against it. When we allow tamas to take over us, we destroy ourselves and harm everyone we come across. And the more powerful we are, the more will be our destructive power.

When Parashurama leaves Rama at the end of the story, humiliated and humbled, the power of darkness too ends. The sun is revealed again, and nature becomes calm again.

In Indian legends, Parashurama is a great warrior and a great ascetic. And what he destroys is arrogant power. Arrogant power needs to be destroyed. It was the great mission of his life. But after he completes that mission, the stories we hear of him all have an element of darkness in them – whether it is his attempt to battle with Bhishma, his disciple, seeking what he believed was justice for Amba, or in his cursing Karna, another disciple of his, for his kindness to him, for his devotion to him, for Karna’s enduring unendurable pain for his sake. True, the reason given is that Karna had told him a lie about who he was in order to learn from him since he would not have accepted Karna as a disciple otherwise.

Many leaders of men today have unlimited power with them. That power should be used for the good of the world – lokasangraha – says Indian culture. And on no account should we use it in arrogance and haughtiness to satisfy our ego. If we do, what will happen to us is what happened to Parashuurama: destruction of all the worlds we have acquired. That is apart from the harm we cause the world.

0o0

The Mahabharata too tells us its own version of this story of the encounter between Rama and Parashurama. According to this telling, when Rama’s fame spread everywhere from Ayodhya, “impelled by curiosity” Parashurama takes his bow with which he had killed the kshatriyas and goes to Ayodhya to meet him there and to test for himself how great young Rama is. Dasharatha hearing of the arrival of the ascetic-warrior sends Rama to receive him at the outskirts of Ayodhya with all respect due to the great hero that he is. When Parashurama meets Rama, he offers his bow to him and asks him with a smile to string the bow. Rama accepts the challenge and eventually Parashurama’s pride is humbled.

This telling of the encounter differs in many significant details from Valmiki Ramayana’s telling. But here too, the essential message is the same: when power gives birth to arrogance, it is evil and ultimately it harms oneself, apart from harming others. In this telling also Parashurama loses all his powers and the great master who conquered the earth so many times, is reduced to nothing.

0o0
Valmiki Ramayana translation courtesy: Robert Biggs

Rama: A Study in Self-Mastery

[This study is based exclusively on the Valmiki Ramayana. Other tellings of Rama’s story, which frequently differ from Valmiki’s narration, have not been taken into consideration.]

It was the Greek Historian Xenophon, I believe, who said, “A king should not only prove himself better than those he rules, he should cast a spell on them.” That is, cast a spell on them by the excellence of his thought and action, by the totality of his commitment to his vision and mission, and by the quality of his living and being. A close look at Rama’s life shows us that he, a man from a period much earlier than that of Xenophon, fully believed in this. That is one of the reasons why his life gives us so many invaluable lessons even for our age separated from his from a few millennia.

One of the most important lessons Rama’s life gives us is in self-mastery, at which he frequently falters, as all human beings do, but invariably triumphs. To look at how Rama falters again and again and eventually masters himself every time is as fascinating to do as it is rewarding. Rama’s failures and triumphs are invaluable lessons for all human beings, and particularly so for men and women in leadership positions who are expected to lead by example and set role models for others to follow.

The most beautiful example for this could be found in the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ramayana.

On that fateful Pushya morning when he was supposed to be installed as the crown prince of Ayodhya, the first major crisis of his life takes place. The previous evening he had been called twice to his father, King Dasharatha, the first time to be informed that he would be crowned the next day and the next time, to give advice regarding his role as a crown prince of the Ikshwakus, who have been kings for generations and have produced several legendary kings. The first meeting is very formal and takes place in the assembly. The second one is informal and intimate, and takes place in the antahpura [inner palace apartments].

On the day his coronation was supposed to take place, early in the morning Sumantra, the minister, comes and informs him that he is wanted at Queen Kaikeyi’s palace, where the king is waiting for him along with the queen. Rama believes it is with regard to something in connection with the coronation – perhaps Kaikeyi is not able to contain her joy at the news. He goes there, accompanied by his brother Lakshmana and several friends. He leaves his friends behind as he goes to the queen’s chamber – we are not sure whether he takes Lakshmana with him or not. There is no reason for him to leave Lakshmana outside: the two brothers are inseparable and he is going to meet his father and step-mother, who has all along been as loving and close to him as his own mother. However, the text perhaps implies that he went in alone into Kaikeyi’s chamber.

The sight that meets him there is disturbing. Both the king and the queen are seated together, but Dasharatha’s face is marked by deep sorrow. He utters just one word – Rama, his beloved son’s name – and becomes silent. The king in his grief is terrible to look at. Rama wonders what could be the reason for his father’s misery and we see Rama upset for the first time in the Ramayana. Describing him the Ramayana says he was agitated as an ocean on the full moon night – babhūva samrabdhatarah samudra iva parvani. [2-18-7]

He asks Kaikeyi what has happened – his main suspicion is that he has done something that has made his father unhappy with him. Or maybe, the king is not well. Kaikeyi assures him he has done nothing wrong, nor is the king suffering from any ailment. The king’s problem is, she tells Rama, that he made a promise to her a long time ago and now he does not want to fulfil that promise. She also adds she would tell Rama about it all if he promises to do whatever the king wants, whether it is good or bad.

The very idea that he would not fulfill a wish in Dasharatha’s mind is shocking to Rama and he tells Kaikeyi as much. He tells her he shall jump into fire at one word from Dasharatha; he shall eat deadly poison, if that is what he wanted, or drown in an ocean. He vows that he would do whatever the king wants. He assures her “Rama does not speak twice.” Ramo dvir na abhibhashate. His words, once spoken, are final. He would stand by whatever he says once.

Kaikeyi now tells Rama that Dasharatha had long ago given her two boons and using them she has demanded that Bharata should be crowned as the crown prince in Rama’s place and Rama should go on an exile to the Dandaka forest for fourteen years. She asks Rama to now fulfil the king’s promise and save Dasharatha’s truth. She wants Rama to leave for the forest that very day.

Hearing those harsh words of Kaikeyi, the Ramayana tells us, Rama did not become unhappy: na caiva ramah praviveśa śokam [2-18-41]. This is in the last verse of chapter 18 of the Ayodhyakanda. Again in the first verse of the next chapter, the epic repeats: hearing those words unpleasant like death, Rama did not become distressed. [Tad apriyam amitraghnah vacanam maranopamam, śrutvā na vivyathe ramah. 2-19-1] Instead, he tells Kaikeyi, “All right, let it be so. Obeying the king’s orders, I shall go from here to live in the forest, clad in a piece of bark and wearing matted hair.” In the next verse, he asks Kaikeyi” “But why doesn’t father talk to me happily as he always does?”

In spite of the Ramayana repeatedly telling us Rama was not upset by what he was told, we see that Rama is deeply distressed. Those are the words of a deeply upset mind, for his father has no reason that morning to talk to him happily as he always does.

However, the epic again assures us Rama did not lose the equanimity of his mind. As he made up his mind to go to the jungle, giving up the earth, according to the Ramayana, there was no disturbance in his mind, as in the mind of a man who has gone beyond all worldly things. [Na vanam gantukāmasya tyajatah ca vasumdharām sarvalokātigasya iva laksyate cittavikriya 2-19-33]

According to Valmiki Ramayana, was Rama then affected by the news or not? Did he lose mastery over himself when he received the news or not?

These two are really two different questions and not one question put in different words.

As to the first question we can categorically say yes, he was. He was definitely affected by what Kaikeyi had told him. He was even a little unsettled, as the question he asks about why Dasharatha was not happily talking to him shows. If that is not enough, here is confirmation from the Sanskrit epic itself. In verse 2.19.33, we saw how the Ramayana tells us there was no disturbance in Rama’s mind. But in verse 2.19.35, the poet-sage clarifies the position when he describes in what mental state Rama entered his mother Kausalya’s palace after leaving Kaikeyi’s palace as he went there to give her the bad news: The Ramayana tells us, “Holding his sorrow in his mind, keeping his senses under control, a master of himself, he entered his mother’s palace, to give her the unpleasant news.“ [Dhārayan manasā duhkham indriyāni nigrhya ca, praviveśa ātmavān veśma māturapriya śamsivān. 2-19-35]

This verse makes the answers to the two questions above very clear. Was he affected by the news or not? The answer is, yes, he was, to the extent that he became sad and there was at least the threat of his losing control over his senses, if he did not actually lose it. [In Sanskrit literature, the senses are usually ten: the five sense organs like the eyes and ears, and the five organs of action, like the hands and legs. Sometimes the mind is counted as an eleventh sense organ]. But did he lose control over himself? Not really, and if he did, it was only very temporarily. For when he enters his mother’s mansion, we find he is able to hold his sorrow in his mind, his senses are in full control and he is a master of himself.

Self-mastery is not never losing control over oneself. It is not never being affected by bad news or sad events, or good news, for that matter. True self-mastery is when you are able to hold yourself together in spite of being affected by these. And that is exactly what Rama shows.

Rama is a very deeply emotional individual. I think of all our epic heroes, he is the most emotional. And people with emotional depth are easily affected by the events around them. Rama is repeatedly affected by the events around him, by all major events in his life. But every time he gives in to his emotionality, he controls himself and becomes a self-master again.

That is exactly what he does before his mother Kausalya. Kausalya in Valmiki’s Ramayana is like Dasharatha – extremely sentimental and weak, unable to take stress, and prone to faint under strain. Besides, she has suffered much in life because of the king’s affection for his younger and clearly more talented and attractive wife, Kaikeyi.

When Rama enters his mother’s palace, Valmiki tells us, he is a master of himself, in spite of being deeply distressed. On the way to the inner chambers of Kausalya’s palace, Rama meets in the outer sections of the palace “a very elderly, revered man, seated at the door” [probably the kanchuki, officer in-charge of the women’s quarters], numerous other men around him, groups of honored Vedic scholars, and several young and old female guards. None of them suspects either from Rama’s face or his manners that anything dreadful has happened.

When Rama sees Kausalya, she is engaged in a ritual worship for his welfare. Such is Rama’s mastery over himself by now that his mother sees nothing amiss in spite of the fact that Rama’s coronation has been cancelled, he has been ordered to go on an exile into the dreadful Dandaka forest for fourteen years, it has been decided the crown of Ayodhya would go to Bharata instead of him and Rama is deeply distressed [bhrśam ayastah] about all this. Rama greets her, she gathers him in her arms and speaks words of blessings. She then invites him to take a seat and offers him food. She still has no clue about Rama’s inner condition because of his supreme control over himself – she gets to know of what has happened only he himself tells her of it.

The news devastates Kausalya when she hears it. She swoons and collapses. Rama gathers her from the floor and raises her up. Kausalya laments that she has never known joy in her life, has never once known the joy an eldest queen should know. She tells him she was living under the hope that once Rama became the ruler, she would be able to know the joys she was denied during the day’s of her husband’s power. She says the other wives of the king have constantly been insulting and humiliating, even when he, Rama, was around, and if he went away she would certainly die. In the palace, she wails, her status has been that of the servants of Kaikeyi, or even worse.

Rama loves his mother deeply. He sees her misery and it powerfully moves his heart. But that does not make him lose his control over himself – he knows it is not weakness that would give his mother the strength she now needs more than at any other time in her life. It is Lakshmana who loses his hold over himself and gets into a violent fury.

In his fury Lakshmana says many unforgivable things. He wants Rama to capture power by force and says if anyone stood in his way, he would make the entire Ayodhya devoid of people [nirmanu'yām ayodhyām kari'yāmi. [2.21.20] He says he would slay anyone who took Bharata’s side or desired his welfare. As for his father, Lakshmana says if he turns an enemy goaded by Kaikeyi, then he should be either imprisoned or if necessary, killed. He swears his loyalty to Rama and tells Kausalya that he will kill Dasharatha who has become obsessed with Kaikeyi and has turned stupid in his old age. Kausalya tells Rama he has heard what Lakshmana has said and if it appeals to him, he should act on it.

Rama is now a master of himself, unlike Lakshmana and Kausalya, however devastated he is deep within himself. He tells his mother he would follow the path followed by other great men in the past, who have obeyed their father even when what had to be done was great evil, like Sage Kandu who killed a cow [one of the gravest sins in Rama’s society] in obedience to the wish of his father; even when some of them met with great calamities in obeying their father, as happened to the sons of his ancestor King Sagara. He admonishes Lakshmana and asks him to forget the ideas suggested to him by the evil kshatra greed for power, and follow the path of dharma as he himself was doing. As for himself, he wouldn’t give up dharma for the sake of something as small as a throne. He blames all that has happened on daiva, Divine will. Or else why should Kaikeyi who has never once in the past made any distinction between him and Bharata, now do what she has done, he asks.

Eventually, after a lot more arguments among them, Kausalya gives Rama her blessings to go to the forest and agrees to stay back in Ayodhya awaiting his return, giving up her demand that he take her with him.

The strain of keeping himself in control, however, takes its toll on Rama soon. The imperviousness that he maintained before Kausalya deserts him as soon as he leaves her apartment. He would be very different when he enters his wife’s chamber.

Rama is a dreadful sight when Sita first sees him after he had left early that morning. She has no idea of the new turns events have taken. But one look at him, Sita starts shivering. The Ramayana tells us here that at the sight of Sita, Rama could no more retain his control over his sorrow and his grief came out in spite of himself. His face loses all luster, he is perspiring all over. This is a man who has failed in keeping his sorrow in check, who is no more in control of himself.

We see something of tremendous beauty here. Before his father, who is deeply sentimental and psychologically weak, Rama keeps his mastery in spite of being deeply affected. In front of his friends, who look up to him as their leader, he maintains self-mastery. He maintains self-mastery again in front of his mother, to whom it is his duty to give strength in her moment of crisis – for the crown being withheld from Rama is a greater tragedy to her than to Rama himself; she has been all her later years with the single hope that one day he would become king and she would reclaim the position she had lost when Kaikeyi became the king’s favorite wife. But in the presence of Sita, his wife, who is emotionally as strong as he is, if not more, he allows his emotions to overpower him for the first time.

During this breakdown, he would tell Sita a lot of things that would never occur to him if he were a master of himself. After informing her about what happened in Kaikeyi’s chamber, he tells her he is going on exile and she should stay back at the palace. He then gives Sita instructions about how she should conduct herself from then on. He tells her she should never talk of Rama in Bharata’s presence! Because men in power do not endure other people’s praise, she should never extol Rama’s virtues in Bharata’s presence, particularly so while talking to her [girl] friends! Now that Bharata is in power, Sita should always try to please him!

After this breakdown in Sita’s chamber, he would once again regain command over himself. This time he would maintain his mastery over himself until after he has left Ayodhya, crossed several rivers, and has finally crossed the Ganga and is in the forests beyond it. There, for the first time alone since he received the order of exile from Kaikeyi, with just Sita and Lakshmana with him, in the loneliness of the jungle, with night cutting him off from the rest of the world, he would again let go of himself and breaking down, wail aloud, filling the forest with his grief and sorrow.

But before going to that, let us see how he maintains, with a supreme effort of will, mastery over himself throughout the rest of the agonizing day and the following days and nights until he reaches the forest across the Ganga.

In Sita’s chamber, Rama has to give in to Sita’s demand to be taken with him to the jungle. All his arguments against it prove futile. Sita proves here she is a woman of iron will and gets her way. Sita has no grief over the loss of the kingdom, but that she would have to live separated from Rama is intolerable to her. In her agony at the thought of being forced to live in Ayodhya, of being denied Rama’s company and the opportunity to serve him as his wife, she momentarily loses control over herself and insults Rama, questioning his masculinity itself, but Rama himself never loses his hold over himself. Later he agrees to take Lakshmana too with him.

It is as a master of himself that Rama does the many things he has to do before he leaves for the jungle on the same day as desired by Kaikeyi. He distributes wealth among brahmanas; gives diamonds and ornaments to Guru Vasishtha’s son Suyajna and his wife and to lots of brahmacharis, friends and servants. He also distributes his remaining wealth among the poor, the old and children.

And in the middle of sorrow that is engulfing all of Ayodhya, Rama amazingly becomes light-hearted and has some innocent fun at the cost of a brahmana. The brahmana lives in the jungles near Ayodhya. He is old, yet such is his lifestyle that he glows with spiritual power. The man has a young wife and several children and, unable to find food for them and for himself, he used to always roam around jungles with digging tools in his hand searching for roots and gathering fruits from trees and bushes. His wife very reluctantly addresses him asking him to go to Rama seeking some cows. Rama smiles amused at the wiry old man’s sight and shows him a huge herd of several thousand cows. He gives him a staff and asks him to hurl it as far as he can and tells him that all the cows within the fall of staff will be his. The brahmana tightens his dhoti and hurls the staff with all his strength. Such is the brahmana’s strength that the stick falls on the other bank of the Sarayu. Rama happily gives him all the cows that stood within the fall of the staff. Still smiling, he apologizes for asking the brahmana to do what he did. He says he did what he did to see how much spiritual energy that wiry body of his contained. He tells him that all his wealth belongs to brahmanas and the needy and asks him to ask for anything else he needed.

This is a young man who has just lost his kingdom, snatched away from him moments before his crowning, and has been given an order of exile for fourteen years.

Rama now goes once again to Dasharatha – to take leave of him. Dasharatha begs him to stay for one more night – but Rama knows that is no solution to his father’s problem. By staying back he would only increase Dasharatha’s agony. He refuses.

There are moments when, during this meeting of the father and son, in spite of his self-mastery Rama’s pain and despair show through his words. For instance, while telling his father that the only desire in his mind is to see that his, Dasharatha’s, words [to Kaikeyi] are not broken, Rama says: “I have no desire for the kingdom, nor for the earth, nor happiness; I do not desire any of these pleasures, or heaven. I do not even want to live.” This is not what he will say two days later, when he is away from Ayodhya and alone with his wife and brother in the jungles beyond the Ganga. Rama’s pain and sense of loss come through in his other words here too – for instance, when he repeatedly says how happy he would be surrounded by quiet animals and listening to the chirping of birds in the jungle; how contented he would be eating the fruits and roots of the jungle and seeing the mountains, lakes and rivers.

Of course, it is possible that Rama is, reversing roles, trying to console his father, rather than Dasharatha doing so to his son. Even in this moment of crisis, he knows fully well his duty as a son: be the old father’s strength in his moment of debilitating weakness. He not only shows strength and courage, thus imparting to Dasharatha these, but also reminds his father it is his duty in this moment of crisis to give strength to those around him.

In spite of Rama’s brave words, the father senses his son’s feelings and faints.

Rama’s self-mastery is clearly visible again during the scene when the princes give up royal clothes and change into ascetic clothes in preparation to going on exile to the Dandaka forest. In a touching scene Sita too tries to wear ascetic clothes following Rama and Lakshmana, fails and stands confused and embarrassed. Rama comes forward and helps Sita wear the clothes. This is a scene that would break anyone’s heart – while Rama has been ordered to live in jungles for fourteen years as an ascetic, there are no such compulsions on Sita. She is doing what she is doing out of her love for Rama. The whole royal family watching it breaks down but there is one man totally unshaken by it: Rama. The women of the antahpura beg Rama not to take Sita with him, but to leave her in the palace, but Rama without paying any heed keeps helping his wife wear her new clothes.

Such is the poignancy of the scene that old Sage Vasishtha, a man of full self mastery, too loses his control over himself and, tears flowing down from his eyes, shouts in rage at Kaikeyi, calling the queen evil and wicked. He tells her they [that is, he and others] would put Sita on the throne, for that is where she belongs as Rama’s ‘half’, since a wife is a husband’s half. He tells Kaikeyi that if Sita goes to the jungle with Rama, then the whole city of Ayodhya too would go with them to the jungle. He warns Kaikeyi that even Bharata and Shatrughna would leave Ayodhya and go and serve Rama in the jungle. It is Sita who now speaks and insists that she too would dress like her husband and continues wearing ascetic clothes. During this poignant scene, Rama never loses his self-mastery once.

Dasharatha now insists that Sita would not wear ascetic clothes and would go in clothes of silk. Kaikeyi does not object.

Eventually the scene of actual leave taking comes. Rama, Lakshmana and Sita board the chariot. As Sumantra, the minister, driving the chariot urges the horses forward, a sense of loss spreads over the populace watching it. The whole city goes into a swoon. When they recover, the entire populace of Ayodhya run after the chariot like people tormented by thirst runs towards water. They beg Sumantra to drive slowly so that they could have another look at Rama’s face. Women wail aloud filling the whole place with their anguish. Tears falling down from the eyes of weeping women so drench the earth that the dust raised by the chariot and thousands of men and women immediately settles down. Dasharatha comes out of the palace gates and seeing the disappearing chariot, falls down on the earth like a felled tree. When he comes to, he and Kausalya both begin running after the chariot. Dasharatha shouts at Sumantra asking him to slow down the chariot, to stop it.

Again the one man still in control of himself is Rama. He turns around and looks back. He sees his mother and father and the masses of people running after him, and he knows the sooner this scene ends, the better it will be for all. While thousands of voices from behind ask Sumantra to slow down the chariot, Rama asks the minister to drive faster and faster. He tells Sumantra moving slow will not only increase everyone’s sorrow, but might even have disastrous consequences.

Amazingly, even in his great sorrow, he thinks about Sumantra! What reason will the minister give the king when he goes back for not obeying his order to slow down, to stop? Rama tells him, “If the king questions you when you come back, tell him you did not hear him.”

That is how Rama leaves Ayodhya. He would maintain tight control over himself for the rest of the day and two more days and nights. And then, when he is for the first time alone after he takes his orders from Kaikeyi, with just Sita and Lakshana with him, he would let himself go.

So devastating is his grief now, held under check for three days and two nights, that when it comes out it is shocking not only in its power, but also in its nature. He now accuses his father of being a slave to Kaikeyi, who would do the meanest thing to please her. He accuses Kaikeyi of being an evil woman who can do anything for power, including poisoning Dasharatha to get rid of him to make her son Bharata’s path easier for him. He speaks of the possibility of Kaikeyi poisoning both Kausalya and Lakshmana’s mother Sumitra. He feels that Bharata would now enjoy all the pleasures all alone. He then wails aloud piteously in the solitude of the jungle, tears streaming down from his eyes. It is only after this that he eventually becomes calm like a fire without flames, like an ocean without waves.

Self-mastery does not mean being untouched by emotions.

A World War II movie shows us a shocking scene. Inside a moving train are several passengers, including an ex-soldier. Next to him is seated a young mother, with her baby in her lap. As the train makes its lonely journey through a dull, monotonous afternoon, the passengers fall asleep, including the mother. The baby slips down from her lap and slowly crawls dangerously towards the open door of the compartment. The ex-soldier, awake, watches it without a muscle on his face moving. Watching the scene on the screen, the entire audience holds its breath. But the soldier feels nothing and he does nothing to stop the baby or wake up the mother.

This is no self-mastery by any standards. This is being dead. The ex-soldier hasn’t risen to any spiritual height. What has happened is that he has become sub-human. What was human in him has died. What Rama shows through those three agonizing days is self-mastery of the highest kind. And it does cast a spell – not only on the people of his time, but also over us, across a distance of a few millennia.

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Rama: A Study in Self-Mastery

[This study is based exclusively on the Valmiki Ramayana. Other narrations of Rama’s story, which frequently differ from Valmiki’s narration, have not been taken into consideration.]

It was the Greek Historian Xenophon, I believe, who said, “A king should not only prove himself better than those he rules, he should cast a spell on them.” That is, cast a spell on them by the excellence of his thought and action, by the totality of his commitment to his vision and mission, and by the quality of his living and being. A close look at Rama’s life shows us that he, a man from a period much earlier than that of Xenophon, fully believed in this. That is one of the reasons why his life gives us so many invaluable lessons even for our age separated from his from a few millennia.

One of the most important lessons Rama’s life gives us is in self-mastery, at which he frequently falters, as all human beings do, but invariably triumphs. To look at how Rama falters again and again and eventually masters himself every time is as fascinating to do as it is rewarding. Rama’s failures and triumphs are invaluable lessons for all human beings, and particularly so for men and women in leadership positions who are expected to lead by example and set role models for others to follow.

The most beautiful example for this could be found in the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ramayana.

On that fateful Pushya morning when he was supposed to be installed as the crown prince of Ayodhya, the first major crisis of his life takes place. The previous evening he had been called twice to his father, King Dasharatha, the first time to be informed that he would be crowned the next day and the next time, to give advice regarding his role as a crown prince of the Ikshwakus, who have been kings for generations and have produced several legendary kings. The first meeting is very formal and takes place in the assembly. The second one is informal and intimate, and takes place in the antahpura [inner palace apartments].

On the day his coronation was supposed to take place, early in the morning Sumantra, the minister, comes and informs him that he is wanted at Queen Kaikeyi’s palace, where the king is waiting for him along with the queen. Rama believes it is with regard to something in connection with the coronation – perhaps Kaikeyi is not able to contain her joy at the news. He goes there, accompanied by his brother Lakshmana and several friends. He leaves his friends behind as he goes to the queen’s chamber – we are not sure whether he takes Lakshmana with him or not. There is no reason for him to leave Lakshmana outside: the two brothers are inseparable and he is going to meet his father and step-mother, who has all along been as loving and close to him as his own mother. However, the text perhaps implies that he went in alone into Kaikeyi’s chamber.

The sight that meets him there is disturbing. Both the king and the queen are seated together, but Dasharatha’s face is marked by deep sorrow. He utters just one word – Rama, his beloved son’s name – and becomes silent. The king in his grief is terrible to look at. Rama wonders what could be the reason for his father’s misery and we see Rama upset for the first time in the Ramayana. Describing him the Ramayana says he was agitated as an ocean on the full moon night – babhūva samrabdhatarah samudra iva parvani. [2-18-7]

He asks Kaikeyi what has happened – his main suspicion is that he has done something that has made his father unhappy with him. Or maybe, the king is now well. Kaikeyi assures him he has done nothing wrong, nor is the king suffering from any ailment. The king’s problem is, she tells Rama, that he made a promise to her a long time ago and now he does not want to fulfil that promise. She also adds she would tell Rama about it all if he promises to do whatever the king wants, whether it is good or bad.

The very idea that he would not fulfil a wish in Dasharatha’s mind is shocking to Rama and he tells Kaikeyi as much. He tells her he shall jump into fire at one word from Dasharatha; he shall eat deadly poison, if that is what he wanted, or drown in an ocean. He vows that he would do whatever the king wants. He assures her “Rama does not speak two things.” He would stand by whatever he says once.

Kaikeyi now tells Rama that Dasharatha had long ago given her two boons and using them she has demanded that Bharata should be crowned as the crown prince in Rama’s place and Rama should go on an exile to the Dandaka forest for fourteen years. She asks Rama to now fulfil the king’s promise and save Dasharatha’s truth. She wants Rama to leave for the forest that very day.

Hearing those harsh words of Kaikeyi, the Ramayana tells us, Rama did not become unhappy: na caiva ramah praviveśa śokam [2-18-41]. This is in the last verse of chapter 18 of the Ayodhyakanda. Again in the first verse of the next chapter, the epic repeats: hearing those words unpleasant like death, Rama did not become distressed. [Tad apriyam amitraghnah vacanam maranopamam, śrutvā na vivyathe ramah. 2-19-1] Instead, he tells Kaikeyi, “All right, let it be so. Obeying the king’s orders, I shall go from here to live in the forest, clad in a piece of bark and wearing matted hair.” In the next verse, he asks Kaikeyi” “But why doesn’t father talk to me happily as he always does?”

In spite of the Ramayana repeatedly telling us Rama was not upset by what he was told, we see that Rama is deeply distressed. Those are the words of a deeply upset mind, for his father has no reason that morning to talk to him happily as he always does.

However, the epic again assures us Rama did not lose the equanimity of his mind. As he made up his mind to go to the jungle, giving up the earth, according to the Ramayana, there was no disturbance in his mind, as in the mind of a man who has gone beyond all worldly things. [Na vanam gantukāmasya tyajatah ca vasumdharām sarvalokātigasya iva laksyate cittavikriya 2-19-33]

According to Valmiki Ramayana, was Rama then affected by the news or not? Did he lose mastery over himself when he received the news or not?

These two are really two different questions and not one question put in different words.

As to the first question we can categorically say yes, he was. He was definitely affected by what Kaikeyi had told him. He was even a little unsettled, as the question he asks about why Dasharatha was not happily talking to him shows. If that is not enough, here is confirmation from the Sanskrit epic itself. In verse 2.19.33, we saw how the Ramayana tells us there was no disturbance in Rama’s mind. But in verse 2.19.35, the poet-sage clarifies the position when he describes in what mental state Rama entered his mother Kausalya’s palace after leaving Kaikeyi’s palace as he went there to give her the bad news: The Ramayana tells us, “Holding his sorrow in his mind, keeping his senses under control, a master of himself, he entered his mother’s palace, to give her the unpleasant news.“ [Dhārayan manasā duhkham indriyāni nigrhya ca, praviveśa ātmavān veśma māturapriya śamsivān. 2-19-35]

This verse makes the answers to the two questions above very clear. Was he affected by the news or not? The answer is, yes, he was, to the extent that he became sad and there was at least the threat of his losing control over his senses, if he did not actually lose it. [In Sanskrit literature, the senses are usually ten: the five sense organs like the eyes and ears, and the five organs of action, like the hands and legs. Sometimes the mind is counted as an eleventh sense organ]. But did he lose control over himself? Not really, and if he did, it was only very temporarily. For when he enters his mother’s mansion, we find he is able to hold his sorrow in his mind, his senses are in full control and he is a master of himself.

Self-mastery is not never losing control over oneself. It is not never being affected by bad news or sad events, or good news, for that matter. True self-mastery is when you are able to hold yourself together in spite of being affected by these. And that is exactly what Rama shows.
Rama is a very deeply emotional individual. I think of all our epic heroes, he is the most emotional. And people with emotional depth are easily affected by the events around them. Rama is repeatedly affected by the events around him, by all major events in his life. But every time he gives in to his emotionality, he controls himself and becomes a self-master again.

That is exactly what he does before his mother Kausalya. Kausalya in Valmiki’s Ramayana is like Dasharatha – extremely sentimental and weak, unable to take stress, and prone to faint under strain. Besides, she has suffered much in life because of the king’s affection for his younger and clearly more talented and attractive wife, Kaikeyi.

When Rama enters his mother’s palace, Valmiki tells us, he is a master of himself, in spite of being deeply distressed. On the way to the inner chambers of Kausalya’s palace, Rama meets in the outer sections of the palace “a very elderly, revered man, seated at the door” [probably the kanchuki, officer in-charge of the women’s quarters], numerous other men around him, groups of honoured Vedic scholars, and several young and old female guards. None of them suspects either from Rama’s face or his manners that anything dreadful has happened.

When Rama sees Kausalya, she is engaged in a ritual worship for his welfare. Such is Rama’s mastery over himself by now that his mother sees nothing amiss in spite of the fact that Rama’s coronation has been cancelled, he has been ordered to go on an exile into the dreadful Dandaka forest for fourteen years, it has been decided the crown of Ayodhya would go to Bharata instead of him and Rama is deeply distressed [bhrśam ayastah] about all this. Rama greets her, she gathers him in her arms and speaks words of blessings. She then invites him to take a seat and offers him food. She still has no clue about Rama’s inner condition because of his supreme control over himself – she gets to know of what has happened only he himself tells her of it.

The news devastates Kausalya when she hears it. She swoons and collapses. Rama gathers her from the floor and raises her up. Kausalya laments that she has never known joy in her life, has never once known the joy an eldest queen should know. She tells him she was living under the hope that once Rama became the ruler, she would be able to know the joys she was denied during the day’s of her husband’s power. She says the other wives of the king have constantly been insulting and humiliating, even when he, Rama, was around, and if he went away she would certainly die. In the palace, she wails, her status has been that of the servants of Kaikeyi, or even worse.

Rama loves his mother deeply. He sees her misery and it powerfully moves his heart. But that does not make him lose his control over himself – he knows it is not weakness that would give his mother the strength she now needs more than at any other time in her life. It is Lakshmana who loses his hold over himself and gets into a violent fury.

In his fury Lakshmana says many unforgivable things. He wants Rama to capture power by force and says if anyone stood in his way, he would make the
entire Ayodhya devoid of people [nirmanuṣyām ayodhyām kariṣyāmi. [2.21.20] He says he would slay anyone who took Bharata’s side or desired his welfare. As for his father, Lakshmana says if he turns an enemy goaded by Kaikeyi, then he should be either imprisoned or if necessary, killed. He swears his loyalty to Rama and tells Kausalya that he will kill Dasharatha who has become obsessed with Kaikeyi and has turned stupid in his old age. Kausalya tells Rama he has heard what Lakshmana has said and if it appeals to him, he should act on it.

Rama is now a master of himself, unlike Lakshmana and Kausalya, however devastated he is deep within himself. He tells his mother he would follow the path followed by other great men in the past, who have obeyed their father even when what had to be done was great evil, like Sage Kandu who killed a cow [one of the gravest sins in Rama’s society] in obedience to the wish of his father; even when some of them met with great calamities in obeying their father, as happened to the sons of his ancestor King Sagara. He admonishes Lakshmana and asks him to forget the ideas suggested to him by the evil kshatra greed for power, and follow the path of dharma as he himself was doing. As for himself, he wouldn’t give up dharma for the sake of something as small as a throne. He blames all that has happened on daiva, Divine will. Or else why should Kaikeyi who has never once in the past made any distinction between him and Bharata, now do what she has done, he asks. Eventually, after a lot more arguments among them, Kausalya gives Rama her blessings to go to the forest and agrees to stay back in Ayodhya awaiting his return, giving up her demand that he take her with him.

The strain of keeping himself in control, however, takes its toll on Rama soon. The imperviousness that he maintained before Kausalya deserts him as soon as he leaves her apartment. He would be very different when he enters his wife’s chamber.

Rama is a dreadful sight when Sita first sees him after he had left early that morning. She has no idea of the new turns events have taken. But one look at him, Sita starts shivering. The Ramayana tells us here that at the sight of Sita, Rama could no more retain his control over his sorrow and his grief came out in spite of himself. His face loses all lustre, he is perspiring all over. This is a man who has failed in keeping his sorrow in check, who is no more in control of himself.

We see something of tremendous beauty here. Before his father, who is deeply sentimental and psychologically weak, Rama keeps his mastery in spite of being deeply affected. In front of his friends, who look up to him as their leader, he maintains self-mastery. He maintains self-mastery again in front of his mother, to whom it is his duty to give strength in her moment of crisis – for the crown being withheld from Rama is a greater tragedy to her than to Rama himself; she has been all her later years with the single hope that one day he would become king and she would reclaim the position she had lost when Kaikeyi became the king’s favourite wife. But in the presence of Sita, his wife, who is emotionally as strong as he is, if not more, he allows his emotions to overpower him for the first time.

During this breakdown, he would tell Sita a lot of things that would never occur to him if he were a master of himself. After informing her about what happened in Kaikeyi’s chamber, he tells her he is going on exile and she should stay back at the palace. He then gives Sita instructions about how she should conduct herself from then on. He tells her she should never talk of Rama in Bharata’s presence! Because men in power do not endure other people’s praise, she should never extol Rama’s virtues in Bharata’s presence, particularly so while talking to her [girl] friends! Now that Bharata is in power, Sita should always try to please him!

After this breakdown in Sita’s chamber, he would once again regain command over himself. This time he would maintain his mastery over himself until after he has left Ayodhya, crossed several rivers, and has finally crossed the Ganga and is in the forests beyond it. There, for the first time alone since he received the order of exile from Kaikeyi, with just Sita and Lakshmana with him, in the loneliness of the jungle, with night cutting him off from the rest of the world, he would again let go of himself and breaking down, wail aloud, filling the forest with his grief and sorrow.

But before going to that, let us see how he maintains, with a supreme effort of will, mastery over himself throughout the rest of the agonising day and the following days and nights until he reaches the forest across the Ganga.

In Sita’s chamber, Rama has to give in to Sita’s demand to be taken with him to the jungle. All his arguments against it prove futile. Sita proves here she is a woman of iron will and gets her way. Sita has no grief over the loss of the kingdom, but that she would have to live separated from Rama is intolerable to her. In her agony at the thought of being forced to live in Ayodhya, of being denied Rama’s company and the opportunity to serve him as his wife, she momentarily loses control over herself and insults Rama, questioning his masculinity itself, but Rama himself never loses his hold over himself. Later he agrees to take Lakshmana too with him.

It is as a master of himself that Rama does the many things he has to do before he leaves for the jungle on the same day as desired by Kaikeyi. He distributes wealth among brahmanas; gives diamonds and ornaments to Guru Vasishtha’s son Suyajna and his wife and to lots of brahmacharis, friends and servants. He also distributes his remaining wealth among the poor, the old and children.

And in the middle of sorrow that is engulfing all of Ayodhya, Rama amazingly becomes light-hearted and has some innocent fun at the cost of a brahmana. The brahmana lives in the jungles near Ayodhya. He is old, yet such is his lifestyle that he glows with spiritual power. The man has a young wife and several children and, unable to find food for them and for himself, he used to always roam around jungles with digging tools in his hand searching for roots and gathering fruits from trees and bushes. His wife very reluctantly addresses him asking him to go to Rama seeking some cows. Rama smiles amused at the wiry old man’s sight and shows him a huge herd of several thousand cows. He gives him a staff and asks him to hurl it as far as he can and tells him that all the cows within the fall of staff will be his. The brahmana tightens his dhoti and hurls the staff with all his strength. Such is the brahmana’s strength that the stick falls on the other bank of the Sarayu. Rama happily gives him all the cows that stood within the fall of the staff. Still smiling, he apologises for asking the brahmana to do what he did. He says he did what he did to see how much spiritual energy that wiry body of his contained. He tells him that all his wealth belongs to brahmanas and the needy and asks him to ask for anything else he needed.

This is a young man who has just lost his kingdom, snatched away from him moments before his crowning, and has been given an order of exile for fourteen years.

Rama now goes once again to Dasharatha – to take leave of him. Dasharatha begs him to stay for one more night – but Rama knows that is no solution to his father’s problem. By staying back he would only increase Dasharatha’s agony. He refuses.

There are moments when, during this meeting of the father and son, in spite of his self-mastery Rama’s pain and despair show through his words. For instance, while telling his father that the only desire in his mind is to see that his, Dasharatha’s, words [to Kaikeyi] are not broken, Rama says: “I have no desire for the kingdom, nor for the earth, nor happiness; I do not desire any of these pleasures, or heaven. I do not even want to live.” This is not what he will say two days later, when he is away from Ayodhya and alone with his wife and brother in the jungles beyond the Ganga. Rama’s pain and sense of loss come through in his other words here too – for instance, when he repeatedly says how happy he would be surrounded by quiet animals and listening to the chirping of birds in the jungle; how contented he would be eating the fruits and roots of the jungle and seeing the mountains, lakes and rivers.

Of course, it is possible that Rama is, reversing roles, trying to console his father, rather than Dasharatha doing so to his son. Even in this moment of crisis, he knows fully well his duty as a son: be the old father’s strength in his moment of debilitating weakness. He not only shows strength and courage, thus imparting to Dasharatha these, but also reminds his father it is his duty in this moment of crisis to give strength to those around him.

In spite of Rama’s brave words, the father senses his son’s feelings and faints.

Rama’s self-mastery is clearly visible again during the scene when the princes give up royal clothes and change into ascetic clothes in preparation to going on exile to the Dandaka forest. In a touching scene Sita too tries to wear ascetic clothes following Rama and Lakshmana, fails and stands confused and embarrassed. Rama comes forward and helps Sita wear the clothes. This is a scene that would break anyone’s heart – while Rama has been ordered to live in jungles for fourteen years as an ascetic, there are no such compulsions on Sita. She is doing what she is doing out of her love for Rama. The whole royal family watching it breaks down but there is one man totally unshaken by it: Rama. The women of the antahpura beg Rama not to take Sita with him, but to leave her in the palace, but Rama without paying any heed keeps helping his wife wear her new clothes.

Such is the poignancy of the scene that old Sage Vasishtha, a man of full self mastery, too loses his control over himself and, tears flowing down from his eyes, shouts in rage at Kaikeyi, calling the queen evil and wicked. He tells her they [that is, he and others] would put Sita on the throne, for that is where she belongs as Rama’s ‘half’, since a wife is a husband’s half. He tells Kaikeyi that if Sita goes to the jungle with Rama, then the whole city of Ayodhya too would go with them to the jungle. He warns Kaikeyi that even Bharata and Shatrughna would leave Ayodhya and go and serve Rama in the jungle. It is Sita who now speaks and insists that she too would dress like her husband and continues wearing ascetic clothes. During this poignant scene, Rama never loses his self-mastery once.

Dasharatha now insists that Sita would not wear ascetic clothes and would go in clothes of silk. Kaikeyi does not object.

Eventually the scene of actual leave taking comes. Rama, Lakshmana and Sita board the chariot. As Sumantra, the minister, driving the chariot urges the horses forward, a sense of loss spreads over the populace watching it. The whole city goes into a swoon. When they recover, the entire populace of Ayodhya run after the chariot like people tormented by thirst runs towards water. They beg Sumantra to drive slowly so that they could have another look at Rama’s face. Women wail aloud filling the whole place with their anguish. Tears falling down from the eyes of weeping women so drench the earth that the dust raised by the chariot and thousands of men and women immediately settles down. Dasharatha comes out of the palace gates and seeing the disappearing chariot, falls down on the earth like a felled tree. When he comes to, he and Kausalya both begin running after the chariot. Dasharatha shouts at Sumantra asking him to slow down the chariot, to stop it.

Again the one man still in control of himself is Rama. He turns around and looks back. He sees his mother and father and the masses of people running after him, and he knows the sooner this scene ends, the better it will be for all. While thousands of voices from behind ask Sumantra to slow down the chariot, Rama asks the minister to drive faster and faster. He tells Sumantra moving slow will not only increase everyone’s sorrow, but might even have disastrous consequences.

Amazingly, even in his great sorrow, he thinks about Sumantra! What reason will the minister give the king when he comes back for not obeying his order to slow down, to stop. Rama tells him, “If the king questions you when you come back, tell him you did not hear him.”

That is how Rama leaves Ayodhya. He would maintain tight control over himself for the rest of the day and two more days and nights. And then, when he is for the first time alone after he takes his orders from Kaikeyi, with just Sita and Lakshana with him, he would let himself go.

So devastating is his grief now, held under check for three days and two nights, that when it comes out it is shocking not only in its power, but also in its nature. He now accuses his father of being a slave to Kaikeyi, who would do the meanest thing to please her. He accuses Kaikeyi of being an evil woman who can do anything for power, including poisoning Dasharatha to get rid of him to make her son Bharata’s path easier for him. He speaks of the possibility of Kaikeyi poisoning both Kausalya and Lakshmana’s mother Sumitra. He feels that Bharata would now enjoy all the pleasures all alone. He then wails aloud piteously in the solitude of the jungle, tears streaming down from his eyes. It is only after this that he eventually becomes calm like a fire without flames, like an ocean without waves.

Self-mastery does not mean being untouched by emotions.

A World War II movie shows us a shocking scene. Inside a moving train are several passengers, including an ex-soldier. Next to him is seated a young mother, with her baby in her lap. As the train makes its lonely journey through a dull, monotonous afternoon, the passengers fall asleep, including the mother. The baby slips down from her lap and slowly crawls dangerously towards the open door of the compartment. The ex-soldier, awake, watches it without a muscle on his face moving. Watching the scene on the screen, the entire audience holds its breath. But the soldier feels nothing and he does nothing to stop the baby or wake up the mother.

This is no self-mastery by any standards. This is being dead. The ex-soldier hasn’t risen to any spiritual height. What has happened is that he has become sub-human. What was human in him has died. What Rama shows through those three agonising days is self-mastery of the highest kind. And it does cast a spell – not only on the people of his time, but also over us, across a distance of a few millennia.

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