जटायुषः प्राणत्यागः दाहसंस्कारश्च

At the end of the previous sarga Rāma had embraced Jaṭāyu and sunk to the ground. Now, recovering himself and looking at the vulture brought down by that savage rākṣasa, he spoke to Saumitri, who had every quality of a true friend, a fitting listener where the duty of friendship is the theme. "Surely this bird was struck down by the rākṣasa in battle while striving on my behalf, and he is giving up his life for my sake." Then he noticed something finer: "He is in great distress, and yet there is still breath in this body, Lakṣmaṇa, though he has lost his voice and gazes about him bewildered." Rāma's eye was as keen as a physician's; he saw the life still left in the dying bird, and that gave the chance for their last conversation. "For my sake": gratitude, not curiosity, was the first feeling in Rāma's heart, and the sarga opens with the sense of a debt owed to a friend. From the start the poet sets two things in place, death that cannot be avoided and a debt that cannot be ignored, and the whole sarga moves between them.

Rāma spoke directly to the bird. "Jaṭāyu, if you can speak once more, bless you, tell me about Sītā, and tell me how you were struck down." Even to one whose life was ebbing he wished good fortune, and he asked not only about his own concern but about his friend's wounds. "Why did Rāvaṇa carry off the noble lady? What had I done to him? What fault did he find in me, that he took my beloved? How did her lovely, moonlike face look then, best of birds? What did Sītā say at that moment? What is that rākṣasa's strength, what is his form, what does he do? And where is his home, dear friend? Tell me, I beg you." The order of his questions reveals his mind: first his beloved, then his friend's death, then his own possible fault, then Sītā's face and words, and last the enemy's nature and dwelling, a movement from love toward a settled purpose. By calling the dying bird "dear one," as a son would, he set him in a father's place.

Looking up at Rāma, who was lamenting like a man with no protector, the righteous bird spoke in a faltering voice. "She was carried off by Rāvaṇa, the evil-hearted lord of the rākṣasas, who used a vast magic thick with wind and storm." That word magic shows not Rāvaṇa's valour but his deceit: he hid himself in wind, rain and darkness and did not fight in the open. "When I was worn out, dear one, that night-ranger cut off my wings, took Vaidehī Sītā and went away toward the south." That one word, south, points the way for the whole story to come: Rāma will follow the south, win Sugrīva's friendship and build the bridge; the dying bird's words became the story's guide. Then he told his own state: "My breath is failing, Rāghava, and my sight is wandering. I see golden trees with uśīra grass for hair." Seeing golden trees is a known sign of approaching death, and this fine description of a dying man's failing sight shows the poet's power of observation and tells the listener that little time is left.

Then Jaṭāyu told of a good omen. "The hour in which Rāvaṇa went off with Sītā is one in which an owner quickly recovers wealth that was utterly lost. That hour is called Vinda, and he did not know it, Kākutstha." The name comes from the word for finding, and whatever is taken in that hour is surely found again; mighty as he was, Rāvaṇa did not know the hour, for strength without knowledge is fruitless. "Having stolen your beloved Jānakī, Rāvaṇa, lord of the rākṣasas, will perish as quickly as a fish that swallows the hook. So do not grieve for Janaka's daughter. You will kill him at the forefront of battle and soon be happy again with Vaidehī." Though dying, the bird spoke not of fear but of hope, and that is the highest mark of his friendship. The image of the hook is sharp: what the fish swallows is its death, and Rāvaṇa's prize was the seed of his ruin. The omen too serves the poem's meaning, that time itself will do justice, and with these words Rāma's despair turned to hope.

As the vulture, his mind still clear though his body failed, was answering Rāma, blood mixed with flesh streamed from the dying bird's mouth, yet he did not break off. He finished his last sentence: "He is the son of Viśravas himself, and the brother of Vaiśravaṇa." With that the lord of birds gave up his life, so hard to let go. Naming Rāvaṇa's family was his last service, for by it Rāma could know his enemy. Rāma stood with folded hands saying, "Speak, speak!", but the vulture's life left his body and rose into the sky. That a prince should fold his hands before a bird shows Vālmīki's sense of the equal worth of all beings. Laying his head on the ground and stretching out his feet, his body going slack, the bird sank down on the earth; the three movements are told one by one, so that the moment of death seems to happen before our eyes.

Seeing the vulture lying lifeless like a mountain, his eyes still copper-red, Rāma, made wretched by his many sorrows, said to Saumitri. The one who had flown through the sky was now as still as a mountain. "This bird lived happily for many years here in the Daṇḍaka forest, the haunt of rākṣasas, and here his body has been broken. He who had lived so many years and flourished for so long lies slain today; time indeed is hard to overcome. Look, Lakṣmaṇa: this vulture, my benefactor, has been killed. He went to Sītā's defence, fighting against Rāvaṇa, who was far stronger. Giving up the great kingdom of the vultures that came to him from his fathers and forefathers, this lord of birds has given his life for me." In three thoughts Rāma named three things: that time cannot be escaped, that his friend had served him, and that he was in the bird's debt. In speaking of the kingdom the bird gave up he seems to remember his own; both had given up what they had for the sake of others, and so the king of vultures is set almost as Rāma's equal.

Then Rāma drew a general truth from it: "The good who walk in dharma, the brave who give refuge, are found everywhere, Saumitri, even among creatures born as animals." This is close to the heart of the Rāmāyaṇa: virtue does not depend on birth. "The sorrow of Sītā's abduction has not struck me as hard, gentle brother, as this death of the vulture on my account. Just as the glorious King Daśaratha, so famous, was worthy of my honour and reverence, so is this lord of birds. Saumitri, bring firewood; I will kindle the fire by churning. I want to burn the king of vultures, who died for my sake. I will lay this lord of the bird-world on the pyre and burn him, whom that savage rākṣasa killed." Giving the bird the honour due to his father, Rāma resolved to perform the fire rite, and this is the moral summit of the sarga. That he meant to make the fire with his own hands says something too: the rites for one without kin in the forest were done by the prince himself, not by servants. And it is as though the last rites Rāma had been unable to perform for his father Daśaratha were given here to Jaṭāyu, which deepens the story's gravity.

Rāma addressed Jaṭāyu with a prayer: "The worlds that belong to those devoted to sacrifice, to those who keep the sacred fires, to those who never turn their backs in battle, and to those who give land, go to those highest worlds with my leave. King of vultures, great-spirited one, go now, consecrated by me." Among these four the one who never turns his back in battle matters most, for Jaṭāyu's deed was a hero's sacrifice; he had not fled. So saying, the righteous Rāma laid him on a blazing pyre and, grieving, burned him as he would his own kinsman. Then the valiant Rāma went into the forest with Saumitri, killed large rohi deer and spread out an offering for the bird. Taking out the flesh and shaping it into a ball, the famous Rāma offered it to the bird on the fresh green turf, and he murmured on his behalf the ancestral prayers that brahmins prescribe for a dead man to send him to heaven. Every funeral rite owed to a human being was performed for a bird; Vālmīki's compassion and the order of sacred law stand together here.

Then the two princes went to the river Godāvarī and made the water offering for the king of vultures; having bathed according to the rite laid down in the śāstras, the two Rāghavas offered him water again. In a longer closing measure the poet tells the outcome. That king of vultures, who, struck down in battle, had done a glorious and most difficult deed, was given his last rites by Rāma, who was like a great seer, and he went to the holy and blessed destination that was his own. In the final verse the story moves on. Having made the water offering, the two fixed their minds steadily on that best of birds, then turned their thoughts to recovering Sītā and went into the forest like Viṣṇu and Vāsava, the two lords of the gods. Worn by grief as they were, they shone once more like gods. Grief had been stilled by the rite, and the rite had turned into resolve; so the sarga closes, and in the next the brothers, following the southern road, will enter the Krauñca forest.