Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c20.56

v2.c20.56

loving, kindly words to her brother-in-law as a last greeting for her husband: “It is for suffering that I have assuredly been born. How shall I live without him, and to whom shall I here pour out my grief? And what grounds shall I give in the hermitage for the high-minded Rāma having cast me off? Here in the waters of Gaṅgā I would leave my life behind, but then would the race of my husband die out. Thou knowest, O Rāma, that I am pure, devoted to thee in deepest love, and ever thinking of thy welfare. The happiness and well-being of thy subjects is thy duty and thy glory; be thou towards them as towards brothers.” Deeply sorrowing, Lakshmaṇa comes back over the river, and keeps looking across to her, as she stands in utter loneliness on the other side, and as he drives away on his chariot, racked with grief. What is left now to her forsaken by all? She weeps and weeps ever. The children of the hermitage see her, and run to carry the news to Vālmīki of the wonderfully beautiful stranger lady, who is overcome with sorrow. The holy man comes, tries to comfort her, and entrusts her to the women in the penitential forest. There she brings forth her two sons; from there she comes once more many years later before Rāma’s eyes; he himself, to whom her sons and his have been brought, and in whom the former feelings have probably been roused again, calls her to him for purification before the whole people, and Vālmīki takes her there. The Ṛishi most solemnly swears to her spotlessness. Rāma would now be satisfied, but all the gods have come there, to be witnesses of Sītā’s oath; and she takes it, but otherwise than her lord has looked for: “So truly as in my heart I think of none but Rāma, so truly shall the goddess Earth grant me a cleft. So truly as in thought, word, and deed I honour Rāma, so truly shall the goddess Earth grant me a cleft.” Then before her as she thus protests and prays there rises out of the earth a magnificent throne, resting on the heads of snake spirits, and on the throne is seated the goddess Earth, the mother of the noble lady of a thousand sorrows, and she takes her daughter into her open arms, bidding her a joyful welcome. Down sink the throne, the goddess, and her much-tried child—the fragrant, shyly folded flower, to which so short a happiness in the sun, and but too much icy frost had been granted, has gone home again to whence she came (Rām., vii, 43-49; 95 ff.). Well may Sītā, the spirit of the field-furrow,¹ thus have vanished from the midst of mankind, and from her husband in tales of old, a sister in this to so many fays and spirit-women of legend who are only allowed to abide with their beloved one on earth for a time. But this part of the Rāmāyaṇa does not belong, at least in its present shape, to the original poem, and in the Mahābh., too, the second casting off is not found.