कौसल्यायाः उपालम्भवचनम्

In the previous sarga Sumantra had tried with many words to console Kausalyā, but she had not stopped lamenting. In this one she turns from the charioteer and reproaches her husband himself. Rāma, devoted to dharma and best of those who bring joy, had gone to the forest, and Kausalyā, weeping and sorely stricken, spoke to her husband Daśaratha. She did not begin her reproach abruptly but first reminded the king of his fame: Your great fame is spread through the three worlds, that Rāghava is compassionate, generous and kind of speech. Here "Rāghava" means Daśaratha himself, for he too was born in Raghu's line. The praise already implies the reproach: his fame lay in one place, his deed in another. The poet shows her in two states at once, weeping, the outward sign of grief, and stricken, the pain within.

Then she began a string of questions. How, best of men, will your two sons, brought up in comfort, bear the hardships of the forest together with Sītā? Then her thoughts turned especially to her daughter-in-law. Sītā was young, dark and lovely, delicate and used only to ease; how would she bear the heat and the cold? The large-eyed one who always ate fine food with savoury relishes, how would she now live on wild nīvāra grain? She who grew up amid everything auspicious, listening to song and music, how would she hear the hideous roaring of flesh-eating lions? With these questions the poet shows at once Kausalyā's grief, Sītā's delicacy and the harshness of the forest. Every question begins with "how", and since there is no answer, each is a reproach. The contrast of "raised in comfort" and "brought to grief" sums up their state.

Then the mother thought of her son. Where does he lie now, the mighty-armed one, tall as Indra's banner, that man of great strength with no pillow but his own arm, massive as an iron bar? The thought made her tremble. Then she thought of his face: When shall I see Rāma's face again, lotus-hued, with lovely hair at the temples, breath fragrant as a lotus, with eyes like lotuses? At last she blamed herself: Surely my heart is made of adamant, there is no doubt of it, for though I cannot see him, it does not burst into a thousand pieces. This cry recurs again and again in the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa, but here, coming after her questions, its pain seems all the deeper. The question "where does he lie?" also suggests the mother's own sleepless nights.

Then she made her direct charge: It was a pitiless thing you did, thrusting all thought aside, when my own people were driven out; they deserved every comfort, and now they wander wretched in the forest. "My own people" means Rāma, Lakṣmaṇa and Sītā, and "pitiless" marks the cruelty of the deed. Then she raised a doubt about the future: Even if Rāghava returns in the fifteenth year, it does not seem likely that Bharata will give up the kingdom and the treasury to him. So she showed that the trouble would not end even when the fourteen years were over. From here she began to prove, with examples, that Rāma could not accept the kingdom then.

The first example comes from the śrāddha, the rite for the ancestors. Some, she said, first feed their own kinsmen at a śrāddha, and only afterwards, their business done, look round for the best of the brāhmaṇas. But brāhmaṇas of virtue and learning, the equals of gods, will not accept what comes to them second, not even if it were nectar. Even if it is other brāhmaṇas who have eaten first, wise and excellent brāhmaṇas cannot bring themselves to take the leavings, just as bulls will not submit to having their horns cut. The image is very sharp: an insult is like the cutting of a horn. Kausalyā's meaning was that the kingdom that should have been Rāma's had been given first to Bharata, and so had become like leftovers. "Not even nectar" exaggerates to show how much honour matters.

Concluding her example, she said: In the same way, lord of the people, why should the elder and better brother not scorn a kingdom that his younger brother has already enjoyed? Then she offered further examples. A tiger will not eat prey another beast has brought; so this tiger among men will not accept what another has tasted. Oblations, ghee, the sacrificial cakes, kuśa grass and posts of khadira wood, once used in one sacrifice, are stale and are not used again in another. In the same way this kingdom, once taken and used, is like liquor gone flat, like a sacrifice from which the soma has been lost; Rāma cannot accept it. Rāghava will not bear such an insult, any more than a mighty tiger will bear a hand laid on its tail. These examples are drawn in turn from the animal world, from sacrifice and from ordinary life.

Then she described her son's power. All the worlds together could not make him afraid in a great battle; yet, righteous as he is, he avoids unrighteousness, for it is he who binds the world to dharma. Surely that mighty hero could burn up even the oceans with his golden arrows, as the fire at the world's end burns up all creatures. Yet such a son, with the strength of a lion and the eyes of a bull, a bull among men, has been struck down by his own father, as a fish devours its own young. This is the harshest image of all: drawing on the common belief that a fish swallows its own offspring, the poet shows the father's act as the most pitiless of all, and "his own father" fixes the blame on the father alone.

Then she made dharma itself her question: Is the eternal dharma that the twice-born practise, which the ancient seers saw in scripture, still true for you, now that you have banished a son devoted to dharma? Then she counted up her own state. A woman has one refuge in her husband, a second in her son, a third in her kinsmen; there is no fourth. Of these, you are not mine at all, and Rāma has been sent to the forest; and I do not wish to go to the forest. So in every way you have destroyed me. With all three refuges gone, her grief had no bounds.

The last two verses are in a longer metre, and the force of her speech rises. By you, she said, this realm and its kingship are destroyed; we are all destroyed, with the ministers; I and my son are destroyed, and the townspeople too; only your son and your wife are glad. The word "destroyed" returns again and again, like a curse. Hearing words so full of terrible things, the grieving king cried "Rāma!" and fainted. Then he sank into grief, and at that moment he remembered once more a wrong he had himself done long ago. With this last line the poet sows the seed of the sargas to come: that old wrong is told at length in the sixty-third sarga. Swoon, then memory, then the story: that is the thread joining these three sargas.