दशरथस्य अन्त्येष्टिसंस्कारः

In the previous sarga Bharata, having proved his innocence to Kausalyā with his terrible oaths, had fallen senseless with grief, and the night had passed in lament. Now morning had come, and duty stood before him. Vasiṣṭha, the best of speakers, a seer whose words were always the finest, spoke to Kaikeyī's son as he lay consumed by grief: “Enough of grief, prince of great renown; may all be well with you. The hour has come. Arrange the king's last journey as it should be done.” The guru's words did not forbid grief; they turned it to its duty, leading Bharata from lament to action, and in them the subject of the sarga is announced.

Hearing Vasiṣṭha's words, Bharata, who knew what was right, bowed to the ground before his guru and had all the rites for the dead performed; he did not simply act himself but, as a son's duty required, saw that everything was done. Until Bharata returned from the Kekaya country the king's body had been kept in a trough of oil, for the cremation could not be performed without a son. Now it was lifted out of the oil and laid on the ground. From lying so long in the oil the face had grown pale, yet the lord of the earth looked like a man asleep, and that likeness of death to sleep never fails to move us. When they had laid him on a splendid couch inlaid with jewels of every kind, his son looked at him and broke into bitter lament. His lament took the form of questions: “What did you decide, my king, while I was away and had not yet come home? Having banished Rāma, who knows what is right, and mighty Lakṣmaṇa, where will you go? Where are you going, leaving this grieving people bereft of Rāma, that lion among men whose great deeds cost him no effort? With you gone and Rāma in the forest, who will calmly see to the welfare and safety of this city? Widowed of you, my king, the earth has lost its beauty, and the city looks to me like a night without its moon.” Bharata's pain came not only from losing his father but from the kingdom's being left without a protector: two losses at once, his father gone and his eldest brother in the forest. The widowed earth and the moonless city carry the same meaning: without its guardian, beauty perishes.

As Bharata lamented so, sick at heart, the great sage Vasiṣṭha spoke again: “Mighty-armed prince, let the rites due to this lord of the people be performed steadily and without hesitation.” There was no room here for deliberation; the time itself commanded, and delay would spoil the rites for the body. Bharata said “So be it”, honoured Vasiṣṭha's words and hurried on the officiating priests, chaplains and teachers in every way. To honour his guru's word was his nature: he neither argued nor delayed. The king's sacred fires, carried out from the fire-hall, were offered into by the priests according to rule. Daśaratha had kept the sacred fires and performed the horse sacrifice and others, so his last rite was to be performed with his own household fires; that is the rule for the funeral of one who has kept the sacred fires. Then the attendants lifted the king, from whom all sense had gone, onto a palanquin and carried him away, dispirited, their throats choked with tears so that they could not even weep aloud. He who until then had been called king was now only a burden without life.

People walked ahead of the king scattering gold, silver and garments of every kind along the road. It was his last procession of giving: the king who in life was famed for his generosity had his road strewn with gifts. Others brought sandalwood, aloe resin, sarala, padmaka and deodar and laid them on the pyre, all fragrant woods, a pyre fit for a king. Bringing many other perfumes, costly and common, the priests laid the lord of the earth in the middle of the pyre. Then, having made the offering into the fire, his priests murmured their prayers in low voices, and the sāman singers sang the sāmans as the scriptures direct. So this was no merely worldly funeral but a Vedic rite, with prayers, fire and song. Here the poet does not describe the grief again and again; he tells only the order of the rites, and from that alone the solemnity arises. In place of lament there is now ritual, for ritual is what gives grief its bounds.

Then the king's wives came out of the city in palanquins and carriages, each as befitted her rank, surrounded by the elders; even in going out the royal ladies kept to due order. The priests walked round the king, now laid on the fire, keeping him on their left — in rites for the dead the circling is made to the left, in rites for the gods to the right, and this difference marks the line between the auspicious and the inauspicious. The grieving women led by Kausalyā did the same. Then was heard the piteous crying of thousands of women in anguish, like the cry of krauñca hens. The image recalls Vālmīki's very first verse, for the first poem was born from the killing of a krauñca bird, and here again the cremation of the king is told through the cry of the krauñcas. Daśaratha's death and Rāma's exile — two griefs meet in that sound.

Then, weeping, helpless, lamenting again and again, the king's ladies came down from their carriages on the bank of the Sarayū. With Bharata, the royal women, the ministers and the priests offered water for the dead, then entered the city with tear-filled eyes, and for ten days they slept on the ground and bore their grief. The ten days are the period of ritual impurity after a death; in the next sarga the śrāddha rites begin on the twelfth day. So this sarga completes Daśaratha's funeral.