तारायाः विलापः

Tārā saw her husband lying on the ground, struck down by the arrow that Rāma's bow had loosed, an arrow that brought life to its end, and she came to him and took him in her arms. The poet calls her "moon-faced", literally "she whose face is the lord of the stars", and the epithet plays on her own name, for tārā means a star. When the proud lady saw Vālī, huge as an elephant, laid low by the shaft, her heart burned with grief. She saw the monkey, splendid as the king of mountains, fallen like a tree torn up by its roots, and in her distress she began to lament. Elephant and mountain both speak of size and steadfastness, which makes their fall the more terrible, and the image of the uprooted tree echoes the "felled tree" with which the seventeenth sarga opened. In these first verses three acts follow in turn, seeing, embracing and lamenting, the natural course of grief. And by calling the arrow "the one that brings the end" the poet reminds us that the shaft was death itself; in the nineteenth sarga the fleeing monkeys had likewise spoken of Death come in the form of Rāma.

"Hero, terrible in battle, best of all who leap," she cried, "why do you not speak to me now, when I stand here before you? Get up, tiger among monkeys, and lie on a proper bed; the best of kings do not sleep on the bare ground. You must love the earth very much, lord of the earth, since even with your life gone you hold her close with your limbs and leave me aside. It is plain today, my hero, that because you walked in dharma you have had a city as lovely as Kiṣkindhā built for you on the road to heaven; why else would you leave Kiṣkindhā to lie here? All the pleasures we shared with you in the honey-scented woods, you yourself have brought to an end. Now that you, the leader of leaders of great troops, have met your death, I am joyless and without hope, sunk in an ocean of sorrow. My heart must be hard indeed, for though it burns with grief at the sight of you fallen on the ground, it does not break into a thousand pieces." Her lament follows a natural course: first loving memories, then reproach, and at the end blame of herself. When she says the earth is dear to him she imagines the earth as a rival wife, a fancy natural to a woman parted from her husband. This first part of the lament runs to seven verses and is full of ways of addressing him, "best of leapers", "tiger among monkeys", "lord of the earth", "hero", each recalling a different side of the man. In telling him to rise and take a better bed she seems almost deluded, speaking to the dead as though he were alive. And the picture of a new Kiṣkindhā built in heaven is deeply moving: wherever her husband is, there the city must be.

"You carried off Sugrīva's wife and drove him into exile, lord of monkeys," she went on, "and this is the fruit of it that has come to you. I wanted nothing but your welfare and spoke to you for your own good, and in your folly you rebuked me for it. Surely now, my noble lord, you who honoured others, you will stir the hearts of the apsarases, the heavenly nymphs, proud of their beauty and youth and skilled in every art. It was Time, beyond all doubt, that ended your life, for it was by force that you, who bowed to no one, were brought under Sugrīva's power." Then she turned her words against Rāma: "Kākutstha killed Vālī unfairly while he was fighting someone else, and even after so shameful a deed he feels no remorse." The remark about the apsarases, almost a jest in the midst of grief, is strange, but what it really says is that a hero goes to heaven. Her charge against Rāma is made to his face, and it echoes the charge Vālī himself made in the seventeenth sarga. Yet Tārā also names her husband's own fault plainly, the seizing of Rumā and the banishing of Sugrīva, so her lament is not grief alone but grief that still judges right from wrong. She remembers too how her good counsel, given in the fifteenth sarga, was scorned. Her reproach of Rāma will be answered by Hanumān in the twenty-first sarga.

"I who never knew sorrow before," she said, "am now a poor woman who must live out her widowhood in grief and pain, like one with no one to protect her. And Aṅgada, my brave boy, so petted and delicate and used to comfort — what will become of him with an uncle mad with rage?" Then she spoke to her son: "Look well at your father, my son, who loved dharma; you will not easily see him again, my child." And again to her husband: "Comfort your son and give me your last word. Smell his head in blessing, for you are setting out on a journey far away." By calling death a journey abroad she softens the word, yet the gentleness only sharpens the pain. Her fear of the angry uncle is the same fear that Vālī voiced in the eighteenth sarga. The single word "never acquainted with sorrow" sums up the whole ease of her former life. The fear itself will prove groundless, for Sugrīva will make Aṅgada crown prince. Smelling the head of a child is a mark of love well known in Indian custom.

"Rāma has done a great deed in striking you down," she said; "he has paid his debt to Sugrīva and kept his promise." Then she turned to Sugrīva: "Have what you wanted, Sugrīva. You will get Rumā back. Enjoy the kingdom without a care; your brother, who was your enemy, is dead." The words are loaded with irony: by joining "your enemy" and "your brother" she exposes how unnatural the quarrel was. She grants that Rāma kept his word, yet there is a sting in it, and her blessing to Sugrīva, "have your wish", is really a reproach. Then to her husband again: "Lord of monkeys, why do you not answer me, your beloved, when I lament like this? Look at all these fine wives of yours." This is not jealousy; it lays bare the pain of his silence. Hearing her lament, the monkey women all around, wretched and stricken, took hold of Aṅgada and wailed in answer. The grief of one woman became the grief of many, and in gathering Aṅgada to them their care was fixed on the boy.

"Hero whose mighty arm wears the armlet," she cried, "why have you left Aṅgada and gone on so long a journey? It is not right to go like this, leaving a son so like you in virtue, so dear and so fair. If ever without thinking I did anything that displeased you, long-armed one, forgive me. Lord of the monkey race, my hero, I bow my head at your feet." The word for armlet is aṅgada, the boy's own name, so in one phrase she speaks of the arm that wore the ornament and the son it has let go, and both are abandoned together. Weeping piteously, Tārā of flawless beauty, with the monkey women around her, resolved to fast to the death, sitting down close beside her husband where Vālī lay. Such a fast is a vow kept until death, and it shows her resolve to follow him, a resolve she had hinted at in the nineteenth sarga when she said she would go to his feet. The last verses are in a longer metre, which deepens the gravity of the lament. The sarga ends on her resolve; in the next, Hanumān will console her.