The Marriage of Dasharatha and Kaikeyi

Gautama tells Shrenika the wondrous tale of how Anaranya's son Dasharatha, while wandering the earth, married Kaikeyi: in the northern city of Kautukamangala ruled King Shubhamati with Queen Prithushri, whose daughter Kaikeyi and son Dronamegha were famed in all ten directions. Kaikeyi, supremely beautiful, held right faith, kept the vows of a shravika (laywoman), knew the Jain teaching deeply and was full of devotion, yet also mastered other systems, Sankhya, Patanjala (Yoga), Vaisheshika, Vedanta, Nyaya, Mimamsa and Charvaka, as well as worldly learning.

She was unrivalled in music and dance, mastering the seven notes (shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama, panchama, dhaivata and nishada) sung from chest, throat and head, the three tempos, the four kinds of tala (steady, moving, ascending and descending) with their thirteen ornaments, the three languages of song (Sanskrit, Prakrit and Shauraseni), the four kinds of instruments (stringed, skin-covered, wind and bronze) and the nine rasas (aesthetic moods) from shringara (love) to shanta (peace). She was also expert in letters, mathematics, prose and verse, grammar, metre, rhetoric, lexicons, logic, history and painting, in judging gems, men, weapons, elephants, trees, cloth and perfumes, in astrology, in treating children, the old, the young, horses and elephants, in mantras and herbs, and in the arts of war, so that no other maiden equalled her.

Wondering who could deserve such a daughter, Shubhamati held a svayamvara and invited Harivahana and many other kings, who came in full splendour, and the wandering Dasharatha came too, with Janaka, without royal pomp yet surpassing all in beauty and virtue. As her maids named each king's land and merits, the discerning Kaikeyi, who could read the marks of men, first cast on Dasharatha the garland of her lotus-like gaze and then, like a royal swan going to a swan among herons, went to him and placed the jewelled garland round his neck as mere custom.

Just-minded kings applauded the match, but insolent ones, furious that she had passed over great princes for an unknown foreigner, prepared to drive him off and drag her away by the hair; the alarmed Shubhamati urged Dasharatha to escape with her in a chariot while he held them off, but Dasharatha laughed and said he would scatter them in all ten directions. He mounted a chariot with Kaikeyi, who took the reins and asked towards whose doom she should drive; he told her not to waste blows on the weak but to drive straight at Hemaprabha, the commander of the hostile army, beneath his moon-white parasol.

Dasharatha's arrows, too swift to be seen, sent many kings fleeing in a moment, and when the shamed Hemaprabha attacked with elephants, horses, chariots and foot soldiers, hurling javelins, arrows and discuses at him alone, the lord of a single chariot fought as if he had countless ones, cut down every shaft, shattered Hemaprabha's banner, parasol, horses and chariot and threw him to the ground, so that he fled trembling on another chariot with his fame blackened. Thus Dasharatha, he of ten chariots, did the work of Anantaratha, one of endless chariots, and amid cries of wonder from both armies and the praise of bards he married Kaikeyi in Kautukamangala with great ceremony and returned to Ayodhya, while Janaka went home to Mithila, and both were welcomed with festivities like a birth celebration and a fresh coronation, living thereafter free of fear.

Before all his queens Dasharatha told Kaikeyi to ask for anything she wished, since without her driving the chariot he could never have defeated so many foes at once, just as the sun could not conquer night without its charioteer Aruna (the dawn); she looked down modestly, and when he pressed her she asked him to keep her boon in trust, to be claimed whenever she wished. The delighted king praised her wondrous wisdom and promised to grant whatever she asked, whenever she asked, and the court marvelled that such a mine of wisdom would ask for something extraordinary, not a trifle; Gautama then announces the story of the birth of Ramachandra, the just and valiant light of the Ikshvaku clan.