रामस्य विलापः पितुश्च जलाञ्जलिपिण्डदानम्

In the previous sarga Bharata had told Rāma that their father had gone to heaven, and this sarga begins with what those words did. Hearing Bharata's piteous speech, with their father's death bound up in it, Rāma lost consciousness. The poet likens that speech to the thunderbolt that Indra, enemy of the demons, hurls in battle: no outward weapon, but Bharata's harsh words were the thunderbolt here. When he had heard it, Rāma, scorcher of foes, flung up his arms and fell to the ground like a tree in full flower felled in the forest by an axe. The image works twice over: Rāma was in flower, gladdened by the sight of Bharata, and he was cut down, severed by the news of his father's death. Lying on the earth, the lord of the earth looked like a sleeping elephant worn out from battering a riverbank; in this kāṇḍa the image of the elephant again and again carries the grief of Daśaratha's house. His brothers, weeping, and Vaidehī with them, sprinkled water on the great archer, wasted all over by grief — the four brothers and Sītā, all in tears, reviving him with water, a picture at the very centre of this kāṇḍa. When he came to himself, tears pouring from his eyes, Kākutstha began to lament at length and piteously. So the first part of the sarga moves from silence to swoon and from swoon to lament, and what Bharata had announced now finds voice in Rāma's words.

Having come to himself and heard that his father, lord of the earth, had gone to heaven, righteous Rāma spoke to Bharata words in keeping with the law. His lament has four themes: the emptiness of Ayodhyā, his own uselessness, Bharata's good fortune, and the loss of the one who guided him. "Now that our father has gone the way appointed for him, what shall I do in Ayodhyā? Who will protect that city, bereft of the best of kings?" Then he reproached himself: "What use am I, born to no purpose, to that great soul? He died of grief for me, and I did not even perform his last rites." The deepest grief for a son is not to have given his father his final rites, and "born to no purpose" is harsh: how can a birth be worthwhile if it caused a father's grief? Then he praised Bharata: "Ah, Bharata, blameless one, you have fulfilled your purpose, for you and Śatrughna honoured the king with all the rites owed to the dead." And he said he would have no heart to go to Ayodhyā even when his exile was over, for the city was leaderless and distracted without its king; even after fourteen years, there would be no reason left to go. Last came words that pierce the heart: "When my exile is done and I am in Ayodhyā, who will guide me now that our father has gone to the other world? In the old days, seeing me behave well, he would speak comforting words to me; where shall I hear such words, so sweet to the ear, now?" To Rāma his father's death was not only a parting but the loss of his guide and his support.

Having spoken so to Bharata, Rāma, burning with grief, went to his wife, whose face was like the full moon, and said: "Sītā, your father-in-law is dead. Lakṣmaṇa, you are fatherless. Bharata brings the bitter news that the lord of the earth has gone to heaven." He told both of them in one verse, for both lived in the forest under his care. As he said this, the tears in the eyes of those illustrious princes welled up many times over; the growth of grief is measured by the very number. Then the brothers comforted him again and again and said, "Let the water-offering now be made for our father, sustainer of the earth" — a turn from grief to duty, made only after they had first consoled him. When Sītā heard that her father-in-law, the great king, had gone to heaven, her eyes brimmed with tears and she could not look at her beloved; the poet gives her grief a single mark, shown by her eyes and not in words. Having consoled Janaka's weeping daughter, Rāma, himself in pain, spoke to Lakṣmaṇa, who was in pain as well. The comforter was suffering just as much, so his comfort was not instruction but shared feeling.

Rāma's instructions were brief and practical: "Bring the iṅgudī paste, and fetch a bark garment and an upper cloth; I shall go to make the water-offering for our great-souled father." A son living in the forest had no gold and no ghee in his hands; all that was left to offer his father was the crushed fruit of the iṅgudī — the most moving touch in the sarga. Even the offering-dress is bark: bark his garment, bark his upper cloth. Then he set the order of going: "Let Sītā walk in front, you walk beside her, and I shall come last; this is a very harsh road to travel." Even a procession of mourning kept its proper order, as was Rāma's way, and in naming the road "harsh" he says what this journey is: not a pilgrimage but the way to a father's last rites. Then Sumantra, their constant attendant — self-aware, wise, gentle, self-controlled, gracious and firm in devotion to Rāma — together with the princes comforted Rāghava, took him by the hand and led him down to the auspicious Mandākinī. The poet's many epithets for the charioteer point not only to his worth but to his being a support: the man who drove the father's son to the forest now leads that son to make his father's water-offering, holding his hand because Rāma could hardly walk. Here, for the first time since hearing of his father's death, Rāma acts: the lament is over and the rite begins.

With difficulty those illustrious men reached the lovely Mandākinī with its fine landing-places and ever-flowering woods; the ford was not far, but grief made every step hard. Coming to a clean, auspicious ford in the swift, unmuddied current, they poured out water for the king with the words, "Let this be yours." Then the guardian of the earth took up a handful of water and, facing south, said weeping: "Here, tiger among kings, is pure, imperishable water; may this that I give reach you today in the world of the fathers." Facing south is part of the rite for the dead, and here it was mixed with tears. Then Rāma climbed back up the bank and with his brothers made the funeral offering for his father. Laying a cake of iṅgudī mixed with jujube on a spread of darbha grass, he said in bitter distress, weeping: "Eat this, great king, and be pleased; it is what we ourselves live on. Whatever a man eats, that his gods eat too." These last words are both a scriptural rule and a consolation: what the son eats is fit for the father. The poet silently lets the contrast stand: Daśaratha, who performed the royal consecration and the horse sacrifice, received his funeral offering in crushed forest fruit. Yet everything was done as the rite requires — the jujube mixed in the cake, the bed of darbha grass; only the materials were of the forest. So the whole funeral rite is shown in brief: the water-offering, the vow made facing south, the cake laid on darbha grass, and the words spoken to the father.

After the offering they climbed back from the river by the same path, and the tiger among men went up the mountain with its lovely slopes — the same Citrakūṭa where they had lived so happily, now filled with the echo of weeping. Reaching the door of the leaf hut, the lord of the earth took hold of Bharata and Lakṣmaṇa with both his hands; in that moment of grief a brother's touch was speech enough, and the door that is meant for welcome became a meeting-place of sorrow. The sound of the brothers and Vaidehī weeping echoed on the mountain like lions roaring; where earlier the elephant lay exhausted, now lions roar, and the mountain's echo spreads the grief. Hearing the uproar of those mighty men weeping as they made the offering for their father, Bharata's soldiers were alarmed, and they said to one another: "Bharata has surely met Rāma; this great sound is theirs, mourning their dead father." The poet shows the army's shrewdness: from the sound alone they guessed everything, for such weeping could come from no one else. Mighty men though the brothers were, here they were only weeping sons, and the soldiers' first response was fear, their second understanding; the sound of grief disarms even an army. From here the sarga's gaze shifts from the four brothers at the hut to the gathering of thousands.

Leaving their mounts, all of them turned towards that sound and ran with one mind, each from wherever he stood. Some went on horses, some on elephants, some on richly adorned chariots, and others, delicate as they were, on foot. Rāma had been away only a short time, yet everyone longed to see him as though he had been gone for years, and they made straight for the hermitage — the time was short, but the separation felt long, which is the measure of the people's love. Eager to see the brothers' reunion, they hurried in vehicles of every kind, a press of hooves and wheel-rims. Struck by so many vehicles and chariot wheels, the earth gave out a thunderous roar like the sky when clouds collide. Terrified by it, the bull elephants with their cows around them went off to another forest, filling the quarters with their scent. Boars, wolves, lions, buffaloes, sṛmara deer, tigers, gokarṇas and gavayas took fright, and the spotted deer with them. Cakravākas, geese, waterfowl, herons, kāraṇḍavas, male cuckoos and curlews lost their wits and fled in every direction. So the sky was covered with frightened birds and the ground with men, and both shone. This long description shows that one family's grief stirs the whole life of the forest: where men gather, beasts and birds flee.

Then the people, arriving all at once, saw that illustrious and spotless tiger among men seated on the bare consecrated ground — he who had been fit for consecration now sat on the plain earth. That ground is the cleared, open space where offerings to the dead are made, and sitting there is prescribed during the period of mourning; so what the people saw was not only a forest-dweller but a son keeping the observances of mourning. "Spotless" matters: the blameless one sat on bare ground while the one who had done the wrong sat in a palace, so the people's anger turned on Kaikeyī and Mantharā. Reproaching them both, they came up to Rāma with faces streaming with tears. Seeing those men so distressed, their eyes full of tears, Rāma, who knew what was right, embraced them as a father would and as a mother would — this, the poet shows, is how a king receives his people. In the two closing verses, in a longer metre, he embraced some, and some saluted him; and the prince went up to them all, friends and kinsmen alike, and honoured each as was due. He did not address the crowd as a mass but went to each person in turn, and that was the root of his hold on the people's love. At last the sound of those great-souled men weeping, making earth and sky resound, filling the mountain caves and all the quarters without pause, was heard like the beating of drums. The sarga ends with that image: the sound of drums, which belongs to festivals, here belongs to grief, and this reversal is the sarga's chief beauty.