लक्ष्मणरोषः रामस्य धर्मोपदेशश्च

Kausalyā had lamented long in the previous sarga, and as Rāma's mother wept, Lakṣmaṇa, in deep distress, spoke words suited to that hour. "I do not like it either, my lady," he said, "that Rāghava should fall under a woman's word, throw away the splendour of kingship and go to the forest. The king is perverse and old and overpowered by his senses; driven by desire, what would he not say?" Lakṣmaṇa does not blame Rāma here, nor even Kaikeyī first; he takes the king's loss of judgement to be the root of it all. "Words suited to that hour" tells us that his speech was born of the heat of the moment, not of reasoned teaching, and the word "distressed" tells us that his anger grew out of grief, not out of hatred.

"I can see no offence or fault in Rāma for which he should be banished from the kingdom to live in the forest," he went on. "I cannot find anyone in the world, not even an enemy or a man he has punished, who could name a fault of his even behind his back. He is like a god, upright, self-controlled, kind even to his enemies; what man who cared for dharma would cast off such a son for no reason? And what son who remembers how a king ought to behave would take to heart the word of a king who has fallen back into childhood?" Lakṣmaṇa's reasoning is plain: punishment requires a fault, and where there is no fault, even a command need not be obeyed. "Even behind his back" means that even where slander comes easily, no fault of Rāma's could be found. "Fallen back into childhood" points to the failing judgement of old age, and "remembering how a king should act" judges the command by the standard of statecraft and finds it without authority.

"While no one yet knows of this," he urged Rāma, "take the government into your own hands, with me beside you. With me at your side, bow in hand, guarding you, and you standing there like Death himself, who could do anything more against you? Bull among men, if anyone sets himself against us, I will empty all Ayodhyā of its people with my sharp arrows. Whoever takes Bharata's side, or even wishes him well, I will kill them all; the gentle man only gets trampled." Here is the central conflict of the sarga: the wish to set a warrior's force in the place of dharma. "While no one knows" shows that he also saw the need for secrecy, since resistance would grow once the news spread. He justifies his policy with the proverb that the gentle are trampled on; but this is exactly the policy Rāma will reject.

Lakṣmaṇa went further still. "If our father has been egged on by Kaikeyī and, to please her, has turned into our enemy, then let him be seized without hesitation, or even killed. Even an elder must be restrained when he is arrogant, cannot tell right from wrong and has taken the wrong road. What strength or what reason does he rely on, best of men, that he wants to give Kaikeyī this kingdom which has come to you?" With the word "arrogant" he marks the limit of an elder's authority: if even an elder is blinded by pride, his command is no longer binding. That principle has the support of the scriptures, but Lakṣmaṇa carries it much too far, moving step by step from "seized" to "even killed", the word "even" marking how far his anger had climbed.

"Having made an enemy of you and of me, as she has, what power has she to hand the royal fortune to Bharata, you who crush your foes? My lady, I swear by my truth, by my bow, by my gifts and by my sacrifices: in heart and in fact I am devoted to my brother. If Rāma is to walk into a blazing fire, or into the forest, be sure that I will have gone in before him." Truth, the bow, gifts and sacrifices are the four highest things a warrior can swear by, and by them he establishes his devotion to his brother. The image of entering fire seems almost a pointer to the books still to come. "In heart and in fact" shows that his love was inward, neither mere words nor formality but part of his very nature.

"I will take your sorrow away by my own strength, as the rising sun drives away the darkness; let the queen see my valour, and let Rāghava see it. I will kill our old father, whose mind is fixed on Kaikeyī, who has become pitiable, who has sunk into second childhood and disgraced himself in his old age." With this Lakṣmaṇa reached the very height of his anger. The poet here shows Lakṣmaṇa's love itself as his failing: a man who loves his brother too much is ready to kill even his father. It is on hearing this that Kausalyā turns to Rāma, and Rāma will give his answer. With the three epithets, pitiable, sunk in childhood, disgraced by age, Lakṣmaṇa tries to strip his father of the reverence due to him, so that killing him would be no sin; but that very argument betrays his passion. The poet makes his character clear: the man who can give up everything for Rāma is ready to give up even dharma.

Hearing these words of the great-hearted Lakṣmaṇa, Kausalyā, weeping and lost in grief, said to Rāma: "My son, you have heard what your brother Lakṣmaṇa has said. Now do whatever should be done next, if it seems right to you. You should not listen to the unrighteous words my rival has spoken and go away from here, leaving me burning with grief." His mother did not command him; she only laid a choice before him, yet her refusal was plain in her words. By calling Kaikeyī's order unrighteous she denied it any authority. Weeping and lost in grief, she spoke from sorrow rather than reason, yet her speech carries a mother's rightful claim, which she goes on to set out at length.

"You are devoted to dharma," she said. "If you think you know dharma and wish to practise it, then stay here and serve me; that is the highest dharma you could practise. Kāśyapa, my son, lived disciplined in his own home serving his mother, and through that supreme austerity he went to heaven. You owe me the same reverence as you owe the king. I do not give you leave; you must not go from here to the forest." With the example of Kāśyapa she shows that service to a mother wins heaven itself, meaning that Rāma would not win it even by his exile. "Stay here" offers him another way: dharma was possible without going to the forest. So the mother tried to bind dharma with dharma, and Rāma would answer her by insisting that his father's command comes first.

"Parted from you, I have no use for life or for happiness," she said; "better for me to eat grass with you. If you go to the forest and leave me here in my grief, I will sit here and fast until I die, for I cannot live. Then, my son, you will earn that hell the whole world knows of, as the ocean, lord of rivers, earned the guilt of killing a brahmin through its unrighteousness." Holding over him the sin of causing his mother's death, she used her last weapon. The example of the ocean comes from old legend, a story in which even the ocean was punished for causing a mother pain. Her vow to fast to death was her final resort, and in trying to bind her son with the guilt of her death she unknowingly doubled the dilemma of his dharma.

To his mother Kausalyā, lamenting so pitifully, the righteous Rāma replied with words full of dharma. "I have no power to overstep my father's word," he said. "I bow my head and beg you: I want to go to the forest. The wise sage Kaṇḍu, a forest-dweller, killed a cow at his father's bidding, though he knew it was wrong." He began by saying not that he was unwilling but that it was impossible: for him a father's command was like a law of nature. The example of Kaṇḍu shows that where a father's word is concerned, even killing a cow was not counted a sin, and the point about Kaṇḍu is that he knew it to be wrong and still obeyed. Bowing his head, Rāma made humility his means of persuasion, not argument or authority but reverence.

"In our own family, long ago, the sons of Sagara dug up the earth at their father's command and met with a terrible death. Rāma, the son of Jamadagni, obeyed his father's word and cut down his own mother Reṇukā with an axe in the forest. These, my lady, and many others equal to the gods have done such things, and I too will carry out my father's word and my father's good without flinching. I am not the only one to obey a father's command in this way; all those I have named did the same." The three examples, a sage, a line of princes and a brahmin, show the primacy of a father's word across all three classes. The story of Sagara's sons was told at length in the Bāla Kāṇḍa: sixty thousand of them dug up the earth at their father's command and were burnt to ashes by the anger of Kapila. Paraśurāma's story is grimmer still, for at a single word from his father he killed his own mother. "Without flinching" shows that there was no weakness in Rāma's resolve.

"I am not introducing some new dharma against your wishes," he said; "I am following the road our ancestors chose and walked. What I must do is being done on earth as it should be, and not otherwise; no one ever comes to harm by carrying out his father's word." Having spoken so to his mother, that best of speakers and finest of all bowmen turned again to Lakṣmaṇa. By refusing any "new dharma" he rejected the charge of a novel decision: what he was doing was sanctioned by tradition. And he named the result too: no one falls by keeping his father's word. The poet then praises Rāma with two epithets, best of speakers and best of bowmen; though he had both powers, the power of words and the power of arms, he took his father's word as his authority.

"Lakṣmaṇa," he said, "I know your matchless love for me, your valour, your courage and your unconquerable spirit. My mother's great and boundless grief comes from not understanding what truth and self-restraint mean. Dharma is supreme in this world, and truth rests on dharma; and our father's word, too, rests on dharma, so it is the highest word. A man who stands by dharma, hero, must not make empty a promise he has given to a father, a mother or a brahmin." First an acknowledgement of love, then the argument: that is Rāma's way of speaking. He traces his mother's grief to its root: she grieves because she does not grasp the purpose of truth and self-restraint. "Truth rests on dharma" is like the guiding principle of the whole sarga, and on it the authority of his father's word depends.

"So I cannot go against my father's charge; it is at my father's word, hero, that Kaikeyī has urged me on. Give up this ignoble plan that rests on the warrior's code alone; hold to dharma, put away harshness and follow my judgement." Having spoken so to his brother out of affection, Lakṣmaṇa's elder brother joined his palms, bowed his head and spoke again to Kausalyā. By calling Lakṣmaṇa's idea one that "rests on the warrior's code" he named its root: to answer with force is the warrior's nature, but here the common dharma of all is stronger. The wording matters too: not simply "Kaikeyī urged me on", but "Kaikeyī urged me on at my father's word"; Kaikeyī was only the occasion, and the command was his father's. In this way he took away the very target of Lakṣmaṇa's anger.

"My lady, give me leave to go from here to the forest," he said. "I charge you by my life: perform the rites of blessing for me. When I have kept my promise I will come back to this city from the forest, as the royal sage Yayāti of old left heaven and returned there again. Mother, hold your grief firmly in your heart and do not weep; when I have done my father's bidding I will come back here from the forest." The example of Yayāti was offered as comfort: even a fall is not final, and once the promise is fulfilled his return is sure. Charging her by his own life was a stronger means than any she had used: she who had tried to bind him with a vow to fast to death was now bound by her son's oath upon his life. So Rāma answered compassion with compassion.

"You, I, Vaidehī, Lakṣmaṇa and Sumitrā, all of us must abide by our father's command; that is the eternal law. Mother, gather up these preparations and put them away, hold down the grief in your heart, and follow my resolve to live in the forest, for it is righteous." Here he set his decision out as the common dharma of the whole family: he was not the only one bound by the command, they all were. His last instruction to his mother was to put away the materials for the consecration. By speaking of "the eternal law" he lifted the matter from the personal to the universal, and by giving his mother a duty in place of her grief he turned her to action, which is itself a way of easing sorrow.

Hearing these words, so righteous, so calm and so unshaken, the queen came back to herself as though she had returned from the dead, and looking at Rāma she spoke again. "My son, I am your elder just as your father is, by my own dharma and by my love. I do not give you leave; you must not go and leave me in such misery. What is life to me here without you, you whose face is like the moon? What is the world to me, or the offerings to the ancestors, or the nectar of the gods? A single moment of your company is worth more to me than the whole world of the living." The poet describes her recovery as a return from death. And in dismissing the offerings to the ancestors and the food of the gods she says that even these are worthless beside a moment of her son's presence, which is everything to her.

Hearing his mother's piteous lament, Rāma blazed up once more, like a great elephant that has gone into the darkness and is being driven back by men with firebrands. Seeing his mother nearly senseless and Lakṣmaṇa stricken and burning with grief, he stood firm in dharma and spoke such righteous words as only he could speak at such a moment. "Lakṣmaṇa, I have always known your devotion and your courage, but without seeing what I intend, you and my mother together are causing me great pain. In this world dharma, wealth and pleasure are all seen to follow from dharma's fruit; where there is dharma, all three are surely present, just as a wife who is obedient, beloved and blessed with sons brings all three." The elephant driven by torches shows Rāma's inner fire: the more he was opposed, the more his resolve blazed. And "as only he could speak" is the poet's own testimony that no one but Rāma could have spoken such words.

"One should not undertake an act in which all three are not present; one should do what leads to dharma. In this world the man bent on wealth is hated, and a life given to pleasure is not praised either. When an elder, a king, a father, an old man gives an order, whether in anger, in joy or even out of desire, what man who is not cruel would fail to carry it out, seeing that it is dharma? So I cannot fail to carry out the whole of my father's promise exactly as it stands. He, brother, is our elder in this charge, and he is the queen's husband, her refuge and her dharma. While that righteous king still lives and walks in his own path, how could the queen leave here with me, like some other woman who has been widowed?" In speaking of the man "who is not cruel" Rāma makes the absence of harshness the root of a son's duty. At the end he refused his mother's plan to follow him as well: if she went to the forest with her son while her husband still lived, she would look like a widow, and that was his reason for refusing.

"So give me leave, as I go to the forest, my lady, and perform the rites of blessing for us, so that I may come back again when the time is over, as Yayāti came back to heaven by his truth. For the sake of kingship alone I cannot turn my back on a glory that brings great reward; life is short, and I will not today choose a paltry earth won through unrighteousness." So that bull among men sought to win his mother over, still determined in his courage to go to the Daṇḍaka forest; and having instructed his younger brother at length, he walked around his mother in reverence in his heart. The circling was inward, done not with the body but with the heart, a last reverence to his mother. "A paltry earth" shows how little a kingdom was worth to him: land won by unrighteousness is a small thing, while fame kept by dharma brings great reward. So the sarga ends, and in the next Rāma will teach Lakṣmaṇa the power of fate.