श्राद्धकर्म, अस्थिसंचयः, भरतशत्रुघ्नयोः विलापः

In the previous sarga Bharata had completed his father's funeral, offered water in the Sarayū and slept on the ground for ten days. Now the period of impurity was over. When the ten days had passed, the prince purified himself, and on the twelfth day he had the śrāddha rites performed. He gave the brahmins wealth, jewels and food in plenty, costly garments and gems of many kinds, many goats, much silver and great numbers of cattle. Nor was that all: he gave the brahmins maidservants and menservants, carriages and very large houses. All this was the offering for the king's passage to the next world, gifts that help the dead on their way. The poet calls Bharata “the son” here, to show that he acted in this not as king but as son; and the abundance of food marks how lavish the giving was, for feeding brahmins is a chief part of the śrāddha.

Then at dawn on the thirteenth day the mighty-armed Bharata, stupefied with grief, broke into lament. He had come to the place of the pyre to gather the bones, which is the rite of the thirteenth day, when the remaining bones are collected after the burning. His throat stopped by his own sobbing, he stood in deep sorrow at the foot of the pyre and spoke to his father, and his words were a double reproach. “Father, you entrusted me to my brother Rāghava, and now that he has gone to the forest and his place stands empty, you have abandoned me. And my mother Kausalyā, whose only support was the son who has been driven to the forest — you have left her helpless. Where have you gone, my king?” His pain was not for himself alone; he remembered Kausalyā's plight too. This reproach to his father sprang from a son's right, not from disrespect; it is natural to question one who has gone away leaving behind those he should have protected.

He saw the circle of ground reddened with ash, where the burnt bones lay scattered, the place where his father's body had come to its end, and he groaned and sank down. As long as the body remained, the grief was bearable; now, seeing that only ash was left, he wept and fell to the ground in his misery. The poet gives a moving image: he fell like Indra's banner slipping from its frame just as it is being raised — the banner was held high, but its support had broken. Then all his ministers hurried to that prince of pure vows, as the seers hurried to Yayāti when he fell at the end of his time. This image of Yayāti recurs in the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa: a king fallen from heaven who was raised again by the company of good men.

Seeing Bharata drowning in grief, Śatrughna too fell senseless to the ground, remembering the protector of the earth. Beside himself, his mind gone, he lamented in deep sorrow, recalling one after another his father's loving ways — each caress, each word. Then he spoke a great metaphor of grief: “This ocean of sorrow, fierce, arising from Mantharā, thronged with the crocodile that is Kaikeyī, made of the granting of boons and impossible to stir, has drowned us.” Source, predator and water are all joined in the image: its source is Mantharā, its devouring beast Kaikeyī, its waters the two boons, and in one verse the whole story is gathered. Here for the first time Śatrughna's grief is described at such length, and since in the next sarga he will turn in anger on the hunchbacked Mantharā, this verse is also the seed of his rage.

Bharata called on his father again: “Father, where have you gone, leaving Bharata weeping — Bharata, delicate and still a child, whom you always pampered? Surely you used to let every one of us choose what we liked in food and drink, clothes and ornaments. Who will do that for us now?” Then his words grew sharper: “The earth does not split open even at the hour when it should! Robbed of you, a king who knew the right and was great of soul, how does it not split apart?” His amazement becomes a reproach: that the earth still stands firm seems itself unfitting. At last he spoke his despair: “With my father gone to heaven and Rāma in the forest, what strength to live is left in me? I will enter the fire. Bereft of my brother and my father, I will not go into empty Ayodhyā that the Ikṣvākus protected; I will go into a grove of penance instead.” Only two paths lay before him, the fire or the penance-grove; the kingdom as a third he did not even consider. The fruit of that resolve appears in the sargas to come, when he refuses the kingdom and sets out to bring Rāma back.

Hearing the two brothers lament and seeing that calamity, all their followers grew still more deeply afflicted; grief spreads, and one man's lament swells the pain of thousands. Then Śatrughna and Bharata, downcast and exhausted, writhed on the ground like two bulls with broken horns: a bull's strength lies in its horns, and the princes' strength lay in their father and their eldest brother, and both were broken. Then Vasiṣṭha, their father's chaplain, sound of mind and a healer — of body and mind alike, and a man of learning — raised Bharata up and spoke. Among all who were distraught, he alone was steady. His words were twofold. First he reminded him of his duty: “My lord, this is the thirteenth day since your father passed away, and the gathering of his bones is still unfinished. Why do you linger here?” Then he taught him the truth of things: “Three pairs of opposites — hunger and thirst, grief and delusion, old age and death — work on all creatures alike. Since they cannot be escaped, it is not right for you to be like this.” The guru's teaching was not mere consolation but a reminder of dharma: knowing that sorrow cannot be avoided, one must go on with one's duty.

Sumantra too raised Śatrughna up and comforted him, and, knowing how things truly are, told him of the birth and passing of all creatures. So two elders counselled two young men: Vasiṣṭha taught Bharata, Sumantra Śatrughna, the one from dharma, the other from experience of the world. The two illustrious tigers among men, once on their feet, looked like two separate banners of Indra weathered by rain and sun; the banner is raised high at the festival and then faded by rain and sun, and so these princes, high in dignity, were withered by grief. As they wiped away their tears, their eyes red and their words piteous, the ministers urged them on to the remaining rites. So the sarga ends with the passage from grief to duty. The poet shows here the limit of grief: lament can be borne only so long as it does not hinder duty; beyond that the elders and ministers calm it.