Skip to content
Padma Puranaपद्मपुराण · Jain Ramayana
हिन्दी

Parva 96

Public Slander against Sita and Rama's Anguish

As Sita's right eye twitches with foreboding, the leading citizens tell Rama that his whole kingdom says he took back a queen who lived in Ravana's house, and Rama is torn between his love for Sita and his fear of infamy.

Part of The Reign, Mathura and Sita's Exile

Summary

While the court is still in the garden, Sita's right eye twitches and she fears new suffering; on the queens' advice she orders unbroken charity and worship until her delivery, and the treasurer Bhadrakalasha fills the temples with offerings while free gifts are proclaimed throughout the city. Meanwhile the leading citizens come before Rama, too awed to speak until he grants them safety, and their chief Vijaya reports that everywhere people say Rama took back Sita after she lived in Ravana's house, and that this example is loosening all moral restraint. Struck as if by a club, Rama wavers between the duty to end the slander and his deep love for the faultless Sita, and the chapter ends with the teaching that attachment is the root of all sorrow.

What happens

10 points

  1. While Rama stays in the garden, the citizens come wishing to see him, and the doorkeepers announce them in the royal assembly. At that moment Sita's right eye begins to twitch, and she fears it foretells sorrow, wondering whether the evil karma that made her suffer in the midst of the ocean is still not satisfied, since karma bound through attachment and aversion must bear fruit and no one can avert it.

  2. Sita asks the other queens what the twitching means. The wise queen Anumati says that the good and bad karma a soul has bound gives it good and bad fruit, that whether one calls it time, fate or God, all worldly beings are subject to karma, and that only the Siddhas (liberated souls) are free of it; queen Gunamala, seeing Sita weep, comforts her that as the foremost of the queens she will come to no harm.

  3. Other queens advise her not to brood but to arrange worship and give kimichchhaka dana (gifts of whatever anyone asks), since charity and worship dispel bad karma. Agreeing that charity destroys obstacles and enmity and is the root of merit and fame, Sita summons the treasurer Bhadrakalasha and orders him to give such gifts without pause until she gives birth.

  4. Bhadrakalasha offers vessels and articles of worship in every Jina temple, arranges dance, song and music in all of them, installs scriptures such as the lives of the Lord and the Puranas, and sends pitchers of milk, curd, ghee, water and sweets for the abhisheka (ritual bathing) of the Jinendra. The chief of the chamberlains, in fine clothes and ornaments, rides through the city on an elephant proclaiming that anyone may take whatever he wishes; the people turn from sin to worship, charity and austerity, and Sita, calm in mind, devotes herself to dharma-dhyana (righteous meditation).

  5. Rama takes his seat in the pavilion and the doorkeeper brings in the citizens, who are dazzled by the hall of gold and jewels and bow with joined hands, trembling with fear. When Rama asks why they have come, the leading men of the city, Vijaya, Madhuman, Kashyapa, Pingala, Kalakshema and others, can only gaze at his feet; awed by his majesty, they stand silent as pictures or tree stumps, frightened like fawns, though he asks them gently again and again.

  6. At last their chief Vijaya, in a faltering voice, begs for abhayadana (a pledge of safety). Rama tells them to fear nothing and speak their minds, promising to relieve their sorrow and to take only the good in their words and not the faults, as a swan takes the milk and leaves the water.

  7. With great difficulty, slowly and softly, Vijaya says that the people have lost all restraint: crooked by nature, they need only an example, as a restless monkey needs only a mirror, and strong sinful men now carry off the young wives of the weak, while others take into their homes chaste women grieving apart from their husbands. By every river, well, lake and seashore, in every village and house, people say that Ravana carried off Sita, the chief queen of Dasharatha's learned son, and that Rama brought her back and kept her at home, so what blame can attach to anyone else, for as the king is, so are the people.

  8. Vijaya begs Rama to find a way to protect dharma and end the people's distress, since there is no one else great enough to do it, and to punish the wicked who spread this talk unchecked; were it not for this one slander, he says, Rama's kingdom would surpass Indra's. Hearing this, Rama is stunned for a moment as if struck by a club, and feels the lotus forest of his fame burning in the fire of infamy.

  9. Torn apart, Rama reflects that the Sita for whom he crossed the ocean and conquered his foe now stains his clan and the honour of a house served by warriors like Sugriva, Hanuman and Vibhishana, and that the people speak the truth, since she did stay in Ravana's house; yet she is utterly devoted to him, faultless and chaste, he cannot bear to be parted from her for a moment, and he asks how he can abandon her. In his anguish he even reviles womankind as a mire that saps strength and blocks the path to nirvana, and wonders whether to cast her off for the people's sake as a snake sheds its skin, but his love holds him back.

  10. Fear of public slander on one side and his overpowering love for Sita on the other both pursue him, and Rama, whose banner bears a lion, feels that no one on earth is as wretched as he, scorched as by the midday sun of summer. The chapter closes with the teaching that raga (attachment) is the root of great sorrow: as long as it remains, samsara (the cycle of rebirth) remains, and only when it is destroyed is liberation won.