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Aranya Kand · Episode 1 · Sargas 1–14
In the forest hermitages, Sita asks Rama why he would fight those who never wronged him — and Rama answers with his promise.
A retelling of Valmiki's Ramayana, not a translation. Where a later tradition adds to the story, we mark it.
The Dandaka forest began with a ring of hermitages. Deer grazed at their doors and the chanting of the Vedas filled the air. Rama unstrung his great bow before he went in. The sages welcomed the three of them with water, fruit and flowers, and with something more. A king protects his people whether he lives in his capital or in the forest, they said. They had given up punishing anyone, by force or by curse, and they had nothing but their austerity. He must guard them as a mother guards the child in her womb.
The next morning the forest changed. The trees were broken, the pools fouled, the birds silent. Out of it came Viradha, a rakshasa as big as a mountain, with lions and tigers spitted on his spear. He snatched Sita up and mocked the brothers. They dressed like hermits and carried bows, he said, and brought a woman into the forest. Rama turned pale. Kaikeyi has her wish today, he told Lakshmana. To see another touch Sita hurt him more than his father's death or the loss of his kingdom. Their arrows fell out of the rakshasa's body, for Brahma had granted him a boon that no weapon could kill him. He dropped Sita, swung both brothers onto his shoulders and ran off with them. At Sita's cries they broke his arms. When he still would not die, Rama set his foot on his throat and told Lakshmana to dig a pit. Then Viradha knew him. He was the gandharva Tumburu, cursed by Kubera to be a rakshasa until Rama freed him. He asked to be buried and told them to seek the sage Sharabhanga.
At Sharabhanga's hermitage Rama saw Indra himself in a chariot drawn by green horses. The king of the gods left as Rama drew near; he would meet Rama, he said, when Rama's great work was done. Indra had come to take Sharabhanga to Brahma's world, but the old sage had waited to see his guest. Sharabhanga sent him on to the sage Sutikshna. Then he kindled his fire, poured in the offering and entered the flames. He rose from them as a radiant young man and went up to Brahma.
Now the ascetics of the forest gathered around Rama, men who lived on water or air or sat amid five fires. A king who takes a sixth of his people's harvest and does not protect them, they said, commits a great wrong. Then they showed him the bodies of sages killed by rakshasas, at the Pampa, along the Mandakini, around Chitrakuta. They had no one else to turn to. Rama told them they should not plead with him; they should command him. He promised to destroy the rakshasas who preyed on them, and to let them see his and Lakshmana's strength.
Sutikshna welcomed him warmly. He offered Rama the worlds his austerity had won, and Rama said he would win his own. The next morning Sita handed the brothers their quivers, bows and swords, and they set out. On that road Sita spoke.
There are three faults born of desire, she said. The worst is false speech. The other two are desire for another man's wife, and cruelty to those who have done you no harm. Rama had never lied and never would. He had never looked at another woman. But the third danger was now before him. He had promised the sages to kill the rakshasas of the Dandaka, and she was afraid. A warrior with a bow in his hand, she said, is like fire beside fuel. Then she told him a story. Indra once came to a holy hermit disguised as a soldier and left a sword in his keeping. The hermit guarded the trust faithfully and carried the sword wherever he went, even to gather roots. Slowly the weapon changed him. He grew harsh, he lost his austerity, and he fell into hell. A warrior's bow in the forest, Sita said, has only one purpose, to protect those who suffer. Where is the weapon and where the forest, where the warrior's code and where the hermit's peace? Let him live by the forest's way now, and by the warrior's way when he was king again in Ayodhya. She was only reminding him out of love, she said; who could teach Rama dharma? He should think it over with Lakshmana and do what was right.
Rama answered her with great tenderness. She had spoken words worthy of Janaka's daughter, he said, and she herself had named the reason for a warrior's bow: so that the afflicted no longer cry out. The sages had not come to him in idle fear. They were being hunted and eaten, set upon at the very hour of their sacrifices. They could destroy the rakshasas with curses, but they would not spend their hard-won austerity on it, so they had come to him for shelter. He had given them his word. I could give up my life, he told her, or even you and Lakshmana, but never a promise once made, above all to brahmanas. He would have protected them even unasked. How could he turn away now that he had promised? He was glad she had spoken, for no one warns a person they do not care for. She was his partner in dharma, he said, dearer to him than his own life.
Sita's fear is real, and the text gives it full weight. Rama does not dismiss it. He answers from inside her own words: the bow is for the suffering, the suffering have asked for it, and his promise binds him. Whether a man can carry a weapon for such a reason and keep his heart unhardened is what the coming years will test.
For ten years Rama wandered among the hermitages, staying a month here, a year there. Then Sutikshna sent him south to Agastya. On the way they spent a night at the hermitage of Agastya's brother. Rama told how Agastya had made the south safe. Once two rakshasa brothers, Ilvala and Vatapi, killed brahmanas by a trick. Ilvala fed them Vatapi in the form of a cooked ram, then called him out of their bellies. Agastya ate the ram and digested him, and then burned Ilvala with a look.
At Agastya's hermitage Rama fell at the feet of the sage, who shone like the sun. Agastya fed his guests and gave Rama a gold-and-diamond bow of Vishnu made by Vishvakarma, unfailing arrows given by Brahma, two quivers that never empty and a golden sword from Indra. He praised Sita, who had followed her husband into such hardship, and likened her to Arundhati. When Rama asked for a place to live, Agastya sent him to Panchavati beside the Godavari, two yojanas away.
On the road to Panchavati they met an enormous vulture and took him for a rakshasa. He spoke gently. I was your father's friend, he said. He was Jatayu, son of Aruna, and brother to Sampati. He offered to watch over Sita whenever the brothers were away. Rama embraced him, and the three went on to Panchavati with the great bird beside them.
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