मातॄणाम् आश्रमागमनं कौसल्याविलापश्च

In the previous sarga Rāma had made the water-offering and funeral offering for his father and had met his people. In this sarga his mothers arrive. The family priest Vasiṣṭha, longing to see Rāma, made his way towards the place with Daśaratha's wives walking in front of him; that the preceptor himself set the women before him shows his sense of what was fitting. Walking slowly towards the Mandākinī, the queens saw the landing-place that Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa used. At the sight Kausalyā's anguish began. Her face wet with tears and wasted with grief, she said to the forlorn Sumitrā and the other royal women: "This is the hard landing-place in the forest that those helpless men first took to, men whose deeds were never hard, and who have been stripped of their land." "Helpless" cuts deep: while Daśaratha lived they had a protector; now there is no father, no kingdom, only a riverbank. And "whose deeds were never hard" sets up a contrast: those who never did a harsh thing now find everything harsh. This landing-place was their first refuge after leaving the kingdom.

Then Kausalyā turned particularly to Sumitrā: "From here, Sumitrā, your son tirelessly fetches water himself every day, for my son's sake." These words were not a reproach but gratitude; through the eldest queen the poet praises Lakṣmaṇa's service. Then she herself set aside any doubt: "Your son has done even the lowliest work, yet he is not disgraced by it; what is disgraced, for all its merits, is work done without purpose for one's brother." Even a lowly task done for an elder brother's sake is no shame; what deserves blame is work that serves no purpose of his. This is a fine account of the ethics of service. At the end a mother's heart shows through: "But today your son too, who never deserved such hardships, should let go of this work that waits for him, lowly and profitless as it is." She has praised him, but her real wish is that he be spared this toil. The poet draws Kausalyā's character delicately: she speaks first not of her own son but of Sumitrā's son's labours; the senior among the co-wives thinks first of another's son. So one of the lasting themes of this kāṇḍa shines out again: grief came through Kaikeyī alone, while among the other queens there is only affection.

Going further, the wide-eyed queen saw on the ground, on darbha blades laid with their tips to the south, the iṅgudī cake set out for the father. Seeing it placed there by the grieving Rāma, Queen Kausalyā said to all Daśaratha's wives: "Look at this, given by Rāghava to his father, the great-souled lord of the Ikṣvākus, exactly as the rule prescribes." Then her lament swelled through four verses. "For that great-souled king, equal of a god, who enjoyed every pleasure, I do not think this fit food. He enjoyed the earth to its four ends and was the equal of great Indra; how is that lord of the earth to eat a cake of crushed iṅgudī? Nothing in the world seems more bitter to me than this: that Rāma, who once lacked nothing, should give his father ground iṅgudī. Seeing the iṅgudī cake Rāma has given his father, how does my heart not burst into a thousand pieces with grief?" At last she fell back on a common saying: "Truly the saying seems right to me now — whatever a man lives on, his gods live on too." Rāma had said just these words in the last sarga; in his mother's mouth they carry the opposite feeling. What the son eats is given to the father — that is the consolation, yet her pain does not ease. The darbha with tips to the south is the mark of a rite for the dead; seeing it, Kausalyā understood everything without anyone telling her. And the crushed iṅgudī is the pulp left after the oil is pressed from the fruit: the food of ascetics had become an emperor's funeral offering.

Her co-wives comforted her in her distress and led her on, and at the hermitage they saw Rāma, like an immortal fallen from heaven — radiant by nature, but fallen from his place, as the poet's recurring image in this kāṇḍa suggests. Seeing Rāma stripped of every comfort, the mothers, stricken and worn down by grief, let their tears fall and wept aloud; the son who had been pampered in the palace stood before them in bark in the forest. That tiger among men, true to his word, rose and clasped the lotus feet of all his mothers. And those wide-eyed women, with their lovely hands, soft to the touch, with tender fingers and palms, wiped the dust from Rāma's back — the most touching picture in the sarga, where a mother's love shows itself without a word. Sumitrā's son too, grieving, looked on all his mothers and, straight after Rāma, quietly and attentively saluted them, keeping himself behind his elder. All the women treated Lakṣmaṇa, Daśaratha's son of auspicious marks, exactly as they treated Rāma; there was not a trace of rivalry among the co-wives. And Sītā too, in her grief, clasped their feet and stood before her mothers-in-law with eyes brimming with tears.

Kausalyā embraced her as a mother embraces a daughter — Sītā, stricken, forlorn and thin from her life in the forest — and said: "Daughter of the king of Videha, daughter-in-law of Daśaratha, wife of Rāma: how has she come to such suffering in this empty forest?" The question expects no answer; the three ways of naming her show how unfit her state is. Then her face was described through four images: like a lotus scorched by the sun, a water-lily bruised, gold dulled by dust, the moon dimmed by clouds. All four are bright by nature and dimmed by something from outside, as Sītā was. Then Kausalyā spoke of her own pain: "Seeing your face, Vaidehī, the grief kindled from the fire-stick of calamity burns me fiercely in my heart, as fire burns the very wood it springs from." The image is subtle: calamity is the fire-stick, and the fire of grief born from it burns the heart that gave it birth. The comparison with a mother and daughter is apt as well: the mother-in-law lays aside that role and becomes a mother, for Janaka's house is far away and Sītā's own mother is not near. While his mother was lamenting like this, Rāghava, Bharata's elder brother, went to Vasiṣṭha and took hold of his feet. Hearing his mother's grief, the son did not answer it but went to his teacher; that was his response.

The last five verses, in a longer metre, lend the end of the sarga its solemnity. As Indra, lord of the immortals, clasps the feet of Bṛhaspati, so Rāghava clasped the feet of the family priest, who was like fire and full of splendour, and sat down with him. Then righteous Bharata, with his own counsellors, the chief men of the city, the soldiers and the company most learned in the law, sat down behind his elder brother; he took his place last of all, showing of himself that his place was after his elder. Seated close by, the mighty Bharata looked at Rāghava, blazing with splendour in an ascetic's dress, and folded his hands, as great Indra reverently folds his hands before Prajāpati. Then a keen and genuine curiosity arose in those noble men: "What fitting words will Bharata say to Rāghava today, when he has bowed to him and honoured him?" With this the poet prepares the next sarga. At the end he sets a picture: Rāghava, firm in truth, great-souled Lakṣmaṇa and righteous Bharata, surrounded by their friends, shone like the three fires at a sacrifice attended by the priests. As the three sacred fires of the sacrificial hall shine with the officiants around them, so the three brothers shone among their friends. Even in the midst of grief the image is of a sacrifice, for what is about to take place is a judgement of righteousness.