कौसल्यायाः विलापः अयोध्यायाः च श्रीहीनता

At the end of the previous sarga the queens had gathered round Daśaratha lamenting; in this one Kausalyā's words are given separately. Looking at the lord of the earth, now gone to heaven, like a fire gone out, like an ocean drained of water, like the sun with its light quenched, three great things all now spent, Kausalyā, her eyes full of tears and worn down by every kind of grief, took the king's head in her lap and spoke to Kaikeyī. Have your wish, Kaikeyī, she said; enjoy the kingdom with no one to trouble you, you cruel and wicked woman who cast the king aside and cared for nothing else. The mockery is sharp: rule undisturbed now. Rāma has gone and left me, and my husband has gone to heaven; I have no heart to live, like a woman lost on a wrong road whose caravan has gone on. What other woman but Kaikeyī, who has thrown off all dharma, would wish to live after abandoning her husband, her very god? A greedy man does not see the harm in what he eats, even the kiṃpāka fruit; and for the sake of a hunchback woman Kaikeyī has destroyed the house of Raghu. The kiṃpāka is the well-known fruit sweet to look at and deadly in its effect. Note that Kausalyā was not only grieving but accusing: this is the first open rebuke of the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa spoken to Kaikeyī's face. Holding her dead husband's head in her lap while she rebuked her co-wife, she showed love and anger at once.

Kausalyā's grief went beyond herself and touched the sorrow of others. When Janaka hears, she said, that the king, pushed into what he should never have done, banished Rāma with his wife, he will grieve as I do. That righteous, lotus-eyed Rāma does not know today that I am left widowed and without protection; though alive, he has vanished from our sight. So she set her grief beside Janaka's: both were old, and both had children in the forest. Then she thought of Sītā: The daughter of the king of Videha, that lovely ascetic, unused to sorrow, will be terrified by the hardships of the forest; hearing at night the cries of fearsome beasts and birds, she will cling in fright to Rāghava. Then she remembered Janaka again: that old man, with few children, brooding on Vaidehī, will surely be overcome with grief and give up his life. Finally she declared her resolve: And I, a faithful wife, will go to my end this very day; I will embrace this body and enter the fire. This resolve to die with her husband was no mere word of grief but real intent, and it led to what followed, for the ministers had to lead her away.

Then the officers of state embraced the poor queen Kausalyā, lamenting in her deep distress, and led her away from that place. The ministers laid the lord of the world in a vat of oil and performed all the rites for the king that had been laid down. But those ministers, who knew what was right, would not carry out the king's cremation without his son, and so they kept guard over the body. That practical decision of the sarga leads on to the summoning of Bharata: the body was kept in oil and the rite waited. The ruling is according to the texts, for lighting the pyre is the son's right, and it fixes the next step of the story, sending messengers for Bharata; so even a practical decision moves the poem forward. Seeing the king laid by his counsellors in the vat of oil and knowing now that he was dead, the women lamented. Raising their arms helplessly, tears streaming from their eyes like waterfalls, weeping and burning with grief, they wailed pitifully: Alas, great king! We have already lost Rāma, who always spoke kindly and kept his word; why do you too abandon us? In one sentence two partings, a son's and a husband's, are woven together.

Now the women's lament turned to fear of the future. Parted from Rāghava through Kaikeyī's wickedness, how shall we widows live in the presence of our rival? That was their real fear, not grief alone but having no refuge. He was our protector and yours, that self-possessed and glorious Rāma, and he has gone to the forest, leaving behind the splendour of kingship. Without you and without that hero, bewildered by disaster and abused by Kaikeyī, how shall we go on living here? "Abused" hints at the fear of humiliation. Finally they summed up Kaikeyī's nature: She who has cast off the king, and mighty Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, and Sītā with them, whom will she not cast off? The question is its own answer: one who had cast off so many would protect no one. Twice they asked how they would live there, for their worry was that they had no place left; the poet suggests that the state of the king's wives was no different from that of any widow.

The noble women of Rāghava's house, wrapped in tears and in vast grief, writhed there with all their joy gone. Then the poet turns from the palace to the city. Without its great-souled king, Ayodhyā lost her splendour, like a night without stars, like a woman parted from her husband; both images are of widowhood, one of the sky and one of a woman. With its people blinded by tears, its high-born women crying out in horror, its squares and the doorways of its houses deserted, the city did not shine as before: the daily sweeping, smearing and offerings at the squares and doorways had not been done that day, and so they looked empty. So the grief spread from the inner palace to the city, as is Vālmīki's art of widening step by step. In describing the city the poet names not one person; only emptiness is described, and so grief takes on a public form that will be described at length in the sargas to come.

The last four verses are in a longer metre. When the king had gone to heaven through grief and the royal wives lay on the ground, the sun suddenly ended his course and set, and night began hers. By setting the sun's ending against the night's beginning, the poet joins the end of the day with the end of the king. The friends who had gathered did not think it right that the lord of the earth should be cremated without his son, and so, agreeing that it must be so and thinking of the king now beyond all sight, they laid him on that bed. Then comes the last picture of the city: bereft of that great soul, it looked like the sky without the sun and its light gone, like a night robbed of its host of stars, its roads and squares crowded with people whose throats were choked with tears. At the end, men and women, gathering in crowds, reviled the mother of Bharata, and at the death of the lord of men they were stricken throughout the city and found no peace. The sarga ends in public anger, all with one voice laying the blame on Kaikeyī. The phrase "the mother of Bharata" is subtle: she is named not by her own name but by her tie to her son, and this hints at the trouble coming to Bharata, who, though innocent, would be blamed for his mother's deed.