सुग्रीवस्य पश्चात्तापस्तारायाश्च वधप्रार्थना

Sugrīva, Vāli's swift younger brother, saw Tārā swept away by that fierce and irresistible flood of grief, and he burned with anguish at his brother's unequalled death; the fruit of victory was not joy but pain. He watched with his face full of tears, and in a moment his proud spirit sickened; the hour of triumph had become the hour of revulsion. Surrounded by his attendants and burning within, he went slowly to Rāma, the slowness showing the weight on his mind. Rāma stood there with his bow taken up, noble and glorious, his arrows like venomous snakes, his limbs marked with every auspicious sign. The poet names the bow first among these five epithets, with a quiet irony: the bow raised for Sugrīva's sake is now the cause of his grief. Sugrīva said to him, "King, you have done just as you promised, and the fruit of the deed is plain to see. But my life is ruined, prince, and my mind has turned away from every pleasure." He has won the kingdom and lost his life. So at the start of the sarga the poet sets up two figures of grief, Tārā on the ground and Sugrīva on his way to Rāma, and the lament of both is the matter of this sarga.

"With the queen weeping bitterly," he said, "with the city crying out in its grief, with the king slain and Aṅgada's life in doubt, my heart takes no joy in the kingdom, Rāma." He gave four reasons for his revulsion. "It was from anger, from resentment and from the great wrong done to me that I agreed before to my brother's death; but now that this leader of monkeys lies slain, best of the Ikṣvākus, I burn with bitter remorse." He counts the three causes himself and does not lay the blame on fate, and that is what makes his self-examination honest. "I think today it would have been better for me to live on for ever on Ṛṣyamūka, that best of mountains, getting by somehow as I could, than to win even heaven by killing him." Not even the kingdom of heaven was worth a brother's death. "When he said to me, 'I do not want to kill you; go,' those words were worthy of that great-souled and wise one; and these words and this deed of mine are worthy of me." He sets his enemy's generosity beside his own meanness. "What brother could welcome the death of a brother so full of virtue, if he weighed the pleasure of a kingdom against the pain of his brother's killing?" Not even a man driven by desire would do this, he says, so he counts himself lower still. By showing a king's revulsion even before his consecration, this sarga strengthens the moral side of the Rāmāyaṇa.

"He never meant to kill me," Sugrīva went on; "that would have been beneath his greatness. It was from the wickedness of my own mind that the deadly wrong came." Again he contrasts the restraint of a great soul with the excess of a small one. "Once, when he had broken me with the branch of a tree and I lay groaning for a while, he comforted me and said, 'Do not do this again.'" The memory of that first fight proves how forgiving Vāli was. "He kept faith with brotherhood, with nobility and with dharma, while all I showed was anger, lust and a monkey's fickleness." By "a monkey's fickleness" he names the restlessness of his own kind as his fault. "My friend, by killing my brother I have taken on a sin not to be thought of, to be shunned, not to be desired and not to be looked upon, just as Indra did when he killed the son of Tvaṣṭṛ." The four epithets show how untouchable the sin is. "The earth, the waters, the trees and women willingly took Indra's sin upon themselves; but who would bear this sin of a monkey, who would wish to take it on?" A god's sin was shared out; a monkey's has no one to take it, and that is his misery. The comparison with Indra has two sides: the sins are alike, but the escape is not, and that is what hardens Sugrīva's despair. He addresses Rāma as "my friend", not as a king, preparing the way for his plea to be allowed to enter the fire.

"After a deed like this, unrighteous and ruinous to my family, Rāghava," Sugrīva said, "I do not deserve the people's honour, nor to be heir apparent, still less king." His remorse ends in refusing all office. "I have done a sin the world condemns, base and harmful to everyone, and this great grief comes over me from every side, as rainwater rushes down to low ground." The image is poignant: grief by its nature flows down to what is low. "A great elephant made of sin, whose hindquarters and tail are my brother's murder, whose trunk, eyes, head and tusks are my remorse, strikes at me as a rutting elephant batters a riverbank." The image of the sin as an elephant is drawn out at length, each limb of it a part of his remorse, so that an inner torment takes visible shape; and the riverbank tells of ceaseless wearing away, the elephant striking again and again and the bank crumbling bit by bit. "This sin is beyond bearing, best of men. The good conduct in my heart turns away from it, as pale gold heated in the fire throws off its dross. Because of me, Rāghava, this whole family of mighty monkey leaders, and Aṅgada too, seem to me half dead with grief. A good son, obedient and easy to please, can be found, but where is a son like Aṅgada? And there is no land where I could have my brother near me again. Brave Aṅgada will not live now, and though his mother might have lived on to care for him, without her son, wasted with grief, she surely will not live; of that I am sure. So, longing for the company of my brother and his son, I will enter a blazing fire. These heroic monkeys will search for Sītā under your orders. Even when I am gone, prince, your whole task will be accomplished. I have destroyed my own family; I am not fit to live, I am guilty. Give me leave, Rāma." His long speech climbs in three steps: first he refuses office, then he pictures his sin in two images, the rushing water and the elephant of sin, and last he begs leave to die. Imagining for himself the deaths of Aṅgada and his mother, he sees no purpose left in living. Yet he does not forget Rāma's cause; in saying that the monkey heroes will search for Sītā he keeps faith with his friend even in death. This is what redeems him: the one who once lived for pleasure now remembers his duty.

When Rāma, hero of the Raghus and slayer of enemy champions, heard the words of Vāli's grief-stricken younger brother, his eyes filled with tears and for a while he was downcast; tears in the eyes of a slayer of foes are the mark of his compassion. At that very moment Rāma, forbearing as the earth and protector of the world, looking about again and again with deep concern, saw Tārā weeping, drowned in her sorrow. The lovely-eyed queen of the monkey king, whose lord had been a lion among monkeys, lay clinging to her husband, and the chief ministers raised her up; even in grief her spirit was not broken. Struggling as they held her and drew her away from her husband, she saw Rāma, bow and arrow in hand, blazing with his own splendour like the sun. She had never seen him before, but when she saw that first of men, with his beautiful eyes, clothed in all the marks of a king, the fawn-eyed lady knew him: "This is Kākutstha." She recognised him by his marks alone, without anyone naming him, and this is how the poet shows Rāma's majesty. Then the noble Tārā, stricken and plunged all at once into calamity, went reeling up to him, who was like Indra, unapproachable and great in majesty. Here the poet moves our gaze from Sugrīva to Tārā, and Rāma's silence joins the two. Sugrīva's plea stays unanswered while Tārā's comes, and Rāma will answer both with a single word of comfort. The two epithets, forbearing as the earth and protector of the world, show his patience and his guardianship, and so that he is one to whom a suppliant may be heard.

Her very body bewildered with grief, the high-minded Tārā came up to Rāma, whose courage was spotless and whose aim had proved unerring in battle, and spoke. First she praised him: "You are beyond measure and hard to approach, master of your senses, devoted to the highest dharma, of undying fame, discerning, forbearing as the earth, your eyes tinged with red. You hold bow and arrows in your hand; you are mighty and firm of frame; you have left behind the glory of a human body and have the glory of a divine one." With this praise she establishes two things, Rāma's devotion to dharma and the certainty of his arrows, and both are the ground of the plea that follows; the red of his eyes hints at his heroic temper. Then she made her plea: "Kill me with the very arrow that killed my beloved. Slain, I will go to him, for without me Vāli will find no joy. Lotus-eyed one, even in heaven, when he meets the apsarases there, with their ruddy crests and their wonderful dress, and looks around and does not see me, he will not care for them. Even in heaven he will grieve without me and lose his colour, just as you do without the princess of Videha on the lovely slopes of the king of mountains." The comparison goes to the heart: she calls Rāma's own grief as witness, for Rāma, suffering the loss of Sītā, knows better than anyone the pain of separation, and this is the most moving argument in her plea. "You know what pain a young man suffers without his wife. Knowing it, kill me, so that Vāli does not suffer the pain of not seeing me." Then she argued from scripture: "If you, great-souled prince, think that the sin of killing a woman will fall on you, then kill me thinking, 'She is his very self,' and it will not be the killing of a woman. By the teaching of the scriptures and the many Vedas, a wife is no other than her husband's own self, and among the wise no gift is known greater than the gift of a wife. If you look to dharma and give me to my beloved, then by that gift you will incur no wrong, even in killing me." She is quoting the law books: a wife is half her husband's body, so killing her is cutting off a part of him, not the separate killing of a woman; and among gifts the gift of a wife is the highest, so in giving her to him Rāma would be doing right. So she makes Rāma's own devotion to dharma the means of her plea. And in a long closing verse she ended: "Do not tell me that you cannot kill me, wretched, helpless, dragged away, brought to this state. Without that bull among monkeys, wise, moving with an elephant's grace, wearing that finest of golden garlands, I shall not live long, king."

When she had spoken, the great-souled lord comforted Tārā and said for her good, "Wife of a hero, do not turn your mind to this. This whole world is ordained by the Creator." By calling her a hero's wife he reminds her of her duty: a hero's wife should not lament like this. "People say that every meeting of joy and sorrow is the Ordainer's work, and the three worlds are all in his power and do not overstep what he has laid down." By tracing joy and sorrow to what is ordained he changes the very object of grief: no one person is to blame; the ordinance is the cause. "You will have that great happiness again, just as before, and your son will become heir apparent; so the Ordainer has decreed. The wives of heroes do not lament this way." In one speech he gives comfort for the future and names her duty in the present. Rāma neither refutes her argument nor defends his deed; by showing that the ordinance rules over all, he simply takes away the ground of her grief, and by promising her son the place of heir apparent he quiets her fears for what is to come. Comforted by that great-souled, mighty scorcher of foes, Tārā, the hero's wife, lovely in form and dress, fell silent; her wailing stopped and her lament was over.