दशरथेन मुनिकुमारवधकथनम्

At the end of the previous sarga the king had fallen asleep. He woke after only a little while, his mind still stricken with grief, and fell to brooding again. Because of the banishment of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, a calamity had settled on that king, who was the equal of Indra, as darkness settles on the sun; the image shows his splendour being covered over. Now that Rāma had gone with his wife, the lord of Kosala, wishing to speak to dark-eyed Kausalyā, remembered a wrong he had done. It was the sixth night since Rāma had been sent to the forest, and at midnight King Daśaratha remembered that wrong. Tormented by grief for his son, he spoke to Kausalyā, who was tormented by grief for her son as well; the same words describe them both, so that their state is shown to be one. The poet marks the time, the hour and the state of mind precisely: the sixth night, midnight, a mind struck down by grief; it is in just such a moment that a man remembers the sin he has committed. "Wishing to speak" suggests that the king had long kept this story hidden in his heart, and now it rose up of itself. The sixth night agrees with the "five nights" of the previous sarga. This sarga enters the story of the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa as a story within a story, told by Daśaratha himself with Kausalyā as listener, and that gives it weight, for it is not the poet's telling but the doer's own confession.

The king did not begin the story at once but first laid down a principle. Whatever a man does, my dear, good or evil, he receives the very fruit born of that act. He who, when he begins an action, does not know whether its fruit will be heavy or light, or what harm may come of it, is called a child. Then came an example: a man cuts down a mango grove and waters palāśa trees; seeing their flowers, he longs for fruit, and grieves when the fruiting season comes, for the fruit of the palāśa is worthless. He who runs after the deed alone, without knowing its fruit, grieves when the fruit is due, like the man who waters the kiṃśuka. Finally he applied the example to himself: I am just such a man; I cut down the mango grove and watered the palāśas. Having cast Rāma away at the very time of fruiting, fool that I am, I grieve too late. The meaning is clear: the mango is Rāma, and the palāśa Kaikeyī's two boons. Four verses give the general principle and the fifth applies it to himself, the old way of teaching. "Longs for" hints at greed, and in calling himself a fool the king condemns himself. Cutting down the mango grove is not just giving up but destroying: Rāma was not only set aside but sent to the forest.

From here the seed of the story is laid open. Kausalyā, said the king, when I was a young prince who had won fame with the bow, people used to say that the prince could strike by sound alone, and it was by that very skill that I committed this sin. So this sorrow of my own making has come home to me, as poison swallowed by a child in ignorance kills the child itself. As another man might be deceived by the flowers of the palāśa, so I did not know what fruit this skill of striking by sound would bear. This expands the words of the previous sarga, "in ignorance, when he could strike by sound alone". Pride in his skill was the root of the fault: the poet suggests that skill in an art is not sinful in itself, but using it without discernment is. There is almost a play on the word for sound, which also means fame: he who had won fame by sound fell through a sound. The poison fits too: the child eats it willingly but in ignorance, and still cannot escape its effect. Here the king blamed neither fate nor Kaikeyī, only himself.

My queen, he said, you were not yet married to me then, and I was only the crown prince, when the rainy season came on, swelling my desire. Then the rains are described in six verses. The sun, having drawn up the moisture of the earth and scorched the world with his rays, passed into that dread southern quarter where the dead walk. The heat vanished at once, glistening clouds appeared, and frogs, cātaka birds and peacocks rejoiced. The birds, the tops of their wings soaked as if they had bathed, could barely reach the trees whose crowns were tossed by rain and wind. Covered by the rain that had fallen and was still falling, a rutting elephant gleamed like a mass of water, like a mountain. The mountain streams, clear as they were, ran pale and red with the minerals of the hills, streaked with ash, winding like serpents. This is not mere ornament: it was the rainy season that brought about the night on which the king went to the bank of the Sarayū, so the description is part of the story. Vālmīki's skill in describing the seasons is on show, scene following scene, sun, clouds, frogs, peacocks, birds, the rutting elephant, the mountain streams. But notice that every scene is bound up with water, and water, in the form of a filled pitcher, will be the occasion of death in the verses that follow. "Swelling my desire" hints at the young prince's state of mind at the time.

In that most delightful season, the king said, I set out in my chariot with bow and arrows, bent on sport, and went along the Sarayū. My senses unmastered, I meant to kill at the watering place by night a buffalo, an elephant or a deer come down to drink, or some other wild beast. Then in the darkness I heard, out in the water and beyond the reach of my eyes, the sound of a pitcher being filled, and it seemed to me the sound of an elephant trumpeting. So I drew out an arrow blazing like a venomous snake and, eager to take the elephant, shot at the sound, at an unseen mark; I loosed that sharpened shaft like a venomous snake. And there in the early light a clear voice rose, the voice of a forest dweller crying "Ah! Alas!" as he fell into the water, his vitals pierced by the arrow; and as he fell to the ground a human voice spoke. The poet leads from sound to sound: the sound of the pitcher, the mistaken sound of an elephant, the sound of the arrow, and at last a human voice, so that the sin of the one who struck by sound is revealed by sound. With "my senses unmastered" the king openly admits his fault: hunting was not the fault, but his lack of self-mastery was. "Unseen mark" matters too: the target was not seen but only guessed at, and taking a life on a guess was the sin. "In the early light" suggests the end of the night, for sin comes to light.

The wounded young ascetic lamented: How could a weapon fall on an ascetic like me? I had only come at night to this lonely river to fetch water. By whose arrow have I been struck? Whom have I harmed? How can such a one as I be killed by a weapon, one who has laid down all violence, who lives in the forest on what the forest gives, who wears a load of matted hair and is dressed in bark and deerskin? Who could gain anything by killing me? What harm has he suffered from me? Such an act, once begun, is fruitless and brings nothing but ruin. Here the poet establishes the ascetic's innocence at every step: he had laid down violence, lived on forest food and wore bark and deerskin, and these three details show that the killing had no cause. He had come only to fetch water, nothing else. His questions, too, begin with how, by whom and to whom, like Kausalyā's questions in the sixty-first sarga, and they too find no answer. The ascetic wondered more at this reversal of dharma than at his own death.

No one would think it good, he went on, any more than violating a teacher's bed. And I do not grieve so much for the end of my own life as for my mother and father, both of them. That aged pair, whom I have supported so long, how will they live when I am dead? My mother and father are old, and I am killed by a single arrow. Who has killed us all, some mere boy with no self-control? Here the ascetic's greatness appears: even at the moment of death he grieved not for himself but for his parents. By calling his killer a thoughtless boy, he did not curse him but only named his lack of judgement, and that was the fruit of his austerity. "That aged pair" suggests how the two leaned on each other, as if they were one, and "supported so long" recalls a son's long service. His greater grief than death was that with his death two others would die too, and his question, how they would live, is the root of the story that follows.

Hearing that pitiful voice, the king said, I, who had always sought dharma, was so shaken that the bow and arrow fell from my hands to the ground. Hearing the sage lamenting so pitifully in the night, I was dazed by the surge of grief and lost my senses. Coming to the spot, sick at heart and shaken, I saw on the bank of the Sarayū the ascetic struck down by my arrow, his coil of matted hair scattered, the water of his pot spilt, his body smeared with dust and blood, lying there pierced by the shaft. He looked up at me as I stood trembling and dismayed, and, as if he would burn me up with his spiritual fire, spoke harsh words: What harm have I done you, O king, living here in the forest, that you should strike me as I came to fetch water for my elders? "As if to burn me up" suggests the power of the ascetic's austerities, and yet he did not curse; that is the mark of this character. The poet reveals the scene step by step: first the voice, then the falling bow, then the king's loss of senses, and finally the sight itself, with its three details of hair, pot and body. And though his words are called harsh, they are really only a question.

With a single arrow driven into my vitals, he said, you have killed two blind old people as well, my mother and the father who begot me. Weak, blind and thirsty, they are surely waiting for me, and will go on enduring that cruel thirst and the hope they have placed in me for a long while yet. Surely there is no fruit in austerity or in learning, since my father does not know that I lie fallen on the ground. And even if he knew, what could he do, helpless and unable to walk? He would be like a tree that cannot save another tree being broken. Go yourself, Rāghava, quickly, to my father and tell him, lest in his anger he burn you up like a forest fire fed with fuel. This narrow footpath, O king, leads to my father's hermitage. Even as he was dying he thought of the king's good, that his father should not curse him. His words soften step by step, from anger to grief to entreaty. The image of one tree unable to save another makes the helplessness of the old father piercing. The narrow footpath shows how lonely the hermitage was, and "thirsty" connects with the story of the water pot.

Go there and win his favour, he said, so that he may not curse you in his anger. And draw the shaft out of me, O king; the sharp arrow presses on my vitals as the rush of a river presses on a soft, high bank. With the shaft in me I suffer; with it drawn out I shall die. So, said the king, I was seized by anxiety over drawing out his arrow, and that anxiety of mine, wretched and sick with grief as I was, the sage's son perceived. Though faint, he spoke to me with difficulty, for he knew the highest truth: I am sinking, my limbs are twisting, I cannot move, I am nearly gone; yet I hold my grief in check with firmness, and my mind is steady. That even in death he could see another's anxiety proves that he knew the highest truth. The king's dilemma is described: if the shaft were drawn out, death; if not, torment; either way there was wrong. It is at such moments that one needs to know how heavy or light an action's fruit will be, the very lack of which was condemned at the start of this sarga. But the sage's son himself freed him from the dilemma.

Let the anguish of having killed a brāhmaṇa be taken from your heart, he said; I am not a brāhmaṇa, O king, so let there be no distress in your mind. I was born of a vaiśya father and a śūdra mother, lord of men. As he spoke these words with great difficulty, his vitals pierced by the arrow, reeling, writhing and trembling on the ground and gasping, I drew the arrow out of his body; and looking up at me in terror, that man rich in austerity gave up his life. Seeing him lying there in the Sarayū, his body wet with water, having lamented with such difficulty and breathing on and on through the wound in his vitals, I was cast down beyond measure, my gentle one. In his last words the ascetic first removed the king's fear, that he had killed a brāhmaṇa, and told his birth for that very purpose; so his generosity reached its height. "In terror" is pitiful even at the end: when the shaft was drawn, he gave up his life in fear. The last verse is in a longer metre, lending weight to the pause in the story. With this the sarga ends, but not the story: the visit to the old parents and the curse are told in the next sarga.