अपशकुनैः शङ्कितस्य रामस्य लक्ष्मणगर्हणम्

In the previous sarga Rāvaṇa had carried Sītā off to Laṅkā; now the story turns back to Rāma. Having killed with his arrow the rākṣasa Mārīca, who could take any shape he pleased and had been roaming about as a deer, Rāma turned back at once along the path to the hermitage. He hurried on, eager to see Maithilī, and just then a jackal behind him let out a harsh, grating howl. Recognising that dreadful, hair-raising cry, Rāma grew uneasy and began to think. "From the way the jackal is howling, I fear something evil. May it be well with Vaidehī; may the rākṣasas not have devoured her!" The howl of a jackal is a well-known omen of misfortune, and here the first misgiving rises in Rāma's mind, to grow step by step until by the end of the sarga it has become certainty. In this way the poet announces the abduction in advance. There is a hidden irony too: the killing of Mārīca was Rāma's victory, but its fruit was only separation.

Rāma worked out for himself the purpose of Mārīca's trick. "Mārīca knew what he was doing. He caught the sound of my voice and cried out in his deer's shape so that Lakṣmaṇa would hear it. When Saumitri hears that cry he will leave Maithilī there and, sent by her, come hurrying to me." Then he saw the hidden design of his enemies: "The rākṣasas together surely meant to kill Sītā. That is why one of them became a golden deer and drew me away from the hermitage. Mārīca led me far off, and then, struck by my arrow, he showed himself a rākṣasa and cried out, 'Alas, Lakṣmaṇa, I am slain!'" The poet shows that Rāma did not merely suspect; he grasped his enemies' whole plan by reasoning. Yet he was far away and could do nothing about it, and the "surely"s and "can it be"s that keep returning in his words betray a mind unsteady and unsure. At last he asked in anguish, "Can it be well with those two, left alone by me in the forest? For on account of Janasthāna I have made enemies of all the rākṣasas." That was his great torment.

"And today I see so many terrible omens." Thinking in this way, and having heard the jackal's cry, the self-possessed Rāma turned and hurried toward the hermitage, going over again and again in his mind how a rākṣasa in the shape of a deer had led him away. Full of misgiving he came to Janasthāna. As he walked, downcast and heavy-hearted, beasts and birds approached him, passed the great-souled prince on his left and sent up dreadful cries. Seeing these most fearful omens, he turned and made for his hermitage with all speed. The poet lays out the ill omens in sequence, first the jackal's howl, then the animals passing on the inauspicious side, then their dreadful cries, and with each the doubt in Rāma's mind grows firmer. It is Vālmīki's way to make outward signs the mirror of inner dread, and Rāma's pace too quickens as he goes, "in haste," "at speed."

Then Rāma saw Lakṣmaṇa coming toward him with the light gone from his face, and not far off the two met, the downcast with the downcast, the grieving with one who shared his grief; the poet's paired words show the two in the same state. Seeing that Lakṣmaṇa had come leaving Sītā alone in a lonely forest haunted by rākṣasas, his elder brother reproached him. Taking him by the left hand, the delight of the Raghus spoke words that were harsh and full of pain, though kindly in their end: "Ah, Lakṣmaṇa, you have done a blameworthy thing, to leave her and come here. Can it be well with her, gentle brother? I have no doubt at all, hero, that Janaka's daughter is lost or devoured." The words were hard, but their root was love and their outcome was for good; taking his brother by the hand was itself a sign of affection, as though he reproached him while holding him close. There was no word of comfort in that meeting; each brother knew the other's grief in silence. Lakṣmaṇa made no reply here; his answer will be heard only later, in the fifty-ninth sarga.

"She has been lost, or eaten by rākṣasas roaming the forest," Rāma said, "so thick are the evil signs that appear before me. Shall we ever find Sītā, Janaka's daughter, safe and whole and still alive, Lakṣmaṇa?" Then he counted the omens: "The herds of deer and the jackal cry out so fearfully, and the birds shriek all around toward the quarter that seems ablaze. Can it be well with the princess, mighty brother?" Finally, in two verses of a longer metre whose long lines carry the depth of his grief, he stated his conclusion. "This rākṣasa, looking like a deer, lured me far away and was killed only with great effort, and as he died he took on his rākṣasa form again. My heart is heavy here and joyless, and my left eye is twitching. There is no doubt of it: Sītā is not here. She has been carried off, or she is dead, or she is somewhere on the road." Those three possibilities show how helpless he was. The reader knows that the first is the truth; Rāma does not, and that is the pathos of separation. So a sarga that began in misgiving ends in certainty.