नदीत्रयतरणम्

In the previous sarga the women of Ayodhyā had wept for Rāma and the city had fallen silent; here the poet follows Rāma on his road again. In what was left of the night Rāma covered a great distance along that same road; the tiger among men went on remembering his father's command, and it was his father's word, not fear of anyone, that drove his chariot on. As he travelled the auspicious night came to an end, and having worshipped at the holy twilight he passed on into the settled country beyond Ayodhyā. Looking at villages whose ploughed fields stretched far to their borders and at woods in flower, he went quickly behind his fine horses, and yet it seemed he was going slowly. That word "slowly" deserves thought: the speed was great, but to one absorbed in the beauty of the road it seemed slow. The poet suggests that Rāma's eyes were not clouded by the sorrow of exile but could still take in the loveliness of the land.

On the road the talk of the people living in the villages reached his ears. Shame on King Daśaratha, they said, who has fallen into the power of desire! Alas, cruel Kaikeyī, wicked and bound to wickedness, harsh and a breaker of all bounds, is bent today on a harsh deed, sending into forest exile such a son of the king, a man of dharma, wise, compassionate and master of his senses. Note that the country people spoke not out of disloyalty to the king but out of pain at the violation of dharma. Rāma's very virtues were the cause of their grief: the injustice of sending a compassionate and self-controlled man to the forest burned them. "Breaker of all bounds" makes Kaikeyī's fault plain: she was not merely selfish but had broken through the limits of the family's dharma. And the repetition "harsh, bent on a harsh deed" has a point: she who was harsh by nature was now engaged in a harsh act.

How, the people asked, will the noble Sītā, Janaka's daughter, who has always known only comfort, endure such hardships? Ah, how loveless King Daśaratha has become towards his own son, to want to cast off the blameless Rāma, the darling of his people. Hearing these words of the villagers, the hero, lord of Kosala, passed beyond the land of the Kosalas. The poet suggests that Rāma's parting was the grief not only of Ayodhyā's citizens but of the whole country. And Rāma heard those words but neither answered them nor stopped the chariot; keeping his father's command was his only reply, and that is the root teaching of this kāṇḍa. The title "lord of Kosala" is poignant here: the poet calls him lord of the Kosalas at the very moment he has lost the kingdom.

Then he crossed the river called Vedaśruti, whose waters are wholesome, and went on facing the south, the quarter where Agastya lives. After travelling a long while he crossed the cool Gomatī, with cattle grazing on its marshy banks, as it flows towards the sea. Crossing the Gomatī too, Rāghava went on behind his swift horses and crossed the river Syandikā, loud with peacocks and geese. There he pointed out to Vaidehī that rich land ringed with kingdoms which King Manu had long ago given to Ikṣvāku. This showing deserves thought: even on his way to the forest Rāma did not forget his ancestors, but showed his wife the land of his house first of all. He told Sītā of the greatness of the very land he was leaving, and so his renunciation appears not as indifference but as the fruit of dharma. The three rivers are named in the order met by travellers going south, Vedaśruti, Gomatī and Syandikā, along a road leading south-east of Ayodhyā to the bank of the Gaṅgā.

Then the glorious best of men, calling his charioteer "Sūta" again and again, spoke in a voice like a rutting gander's call. When would he come back, he asked, and, united once more with his mother and father, go hunting in the flowering woods along the Sarayū? It was not that he longed too much for the hunt, but it was a pleasure without equal in the world, approved by all the royal sages. For in this world the forest hunt was established for the delight of royal sages, and practised in its proper season it is prized by men and by bowmen alike. So, speaking in a sweet voice of one thing and another, the son of Ikṣvāku went on along that road. At the end of the sarga Rāma's mind is seen to be at peace: he did not lament or blame Kaikeyī, but carrying the hope of return he talked pleasantly with the charioteer. The people lamented, but Rāma lightened the charioteer's grief by recalling the hunt, and that is the mark of a steady man.