Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c9.1929

c9.1929

Rāvaṇa who had become the harasser of the entire world began to harass the hermits and sages also. He used to shoot arrows at the hermits who were sitting in meditation in the forests, and taking their blood in the arrow-head, he stored it in a big pot. In the same forest a hermit named Gṛtsamada was engaged in penance to get a daughter who would be equal to Lakṣmī in everyway. He took milk with the head of Darbha grass and stored it daily in a pot. One day Rāvaṇa came to his hermitage and took the pot of milk stealthily. He poured the milk into the pot in which he had stored the blood and stirring it well gave it to his wife Mandodarī. Seeing the character of her husband becoming worse and worse every day, Mandodarī became miserable. One day she decided to commit suicide and drank the contents of the pot given by Rāvaṇa. The thing which was taken for suicide, made her pregnant. Mandodarī buried that foetus in Kurukṣetra. After a while a girl was born from it. That child was Sītā, the daughter of King Janaka.