त्रिषु दिक्षु निष्फलम् अन्वेषणम्

Commanded by the monkey king, the great monkeys set out at once in every direction, exactly as they had been told, to find Vaidehī. There was no delay and no second thought; the order itself became their motion. On every side they searched the lakes, the thickets along the rivers, the open sky, the towns, the country made hard to cross by rivers, and the lands beyond. That they searched the sky as well shows their power of leaping: their gaze reached over water, land and air. All those troop-leaders searched, here and there, the very regions Sugrīva had named to them, with their hills, woods and forests. The division of the quarters described earlier is now put into action, and "exactly as they had been told" shows that they began without overstepping their master's command. From the start the poet makes clear that finding Vaidehī is the one aim and all else is secondary.

Intent on finding Sītā, the monkeys searched all day, and when night fell they gathered together again on the ground: scattered at dawn, reunited at dusk. In those lands they found trees that bear fruit in every season, and there, day after day, they made their beds for the night; the foot of a tree was their bed and forest fruit their food. They had no house or village for shelter; for a whole month the ever-fruiting trees fed them. Counting the day they set out as the first day of the month, they came back to Prasravaṇa when the month was over, and when they met the monkey king, those great monkeys were without hope. In two verses the poet sums up the daily round of that month-long search, and with the third he closes on its failure.

The mighty Vinata came back with his ministers from the east, which he had searched as he had been told, without having seen Sītā. The great monkey Śatabali, having searched the whole north, came back with his army too, but he was afraid: returning empty-handed might rouse his master's fierce anger, for Sugrīva's command had been bound by the month's limit. Suṣeṇa as well, having searched the west with his monkeys, came back when the month was complete and presented himself before Sugrīva. All three returned on time — none overstepped the limit — but all came empty-handed, and each leader came back with his own ministers or army, none alone. So three quarters had come to nothing; only the south remained, where Hanumān had gone.

They came to Sugrīva, who was sitting with Rāma on the heights of Prasravaṇa, saluted him, and said: "We have searched all the mountains, the deep forests, the rivers, the lands reaching down to the sea, and all the inhabited country. We have searched every cave you described to us, and the great thickets overgrown and tangled with creepers. In the dense, difficult and broken country we searched out huge creatures and killed them, and the dense places we searched again and again." Seeing the king seated with Rāma, they saluted first and only then began to speak, their courtesy almost a covering for their failure. Their report is not just an account but proof of their labour, to show they had done everything they were ordered. They mention killing creatures because in that wild country huge beasts had stood in their way, and "again and again" means places searched twice or three times over. And yet the sum of it all was that Jānakī had not been found.

At the end, in a verse of a longer metre, they said: "Lord of monkeys, it is Hanumān, noble in courage and in birth, who will find Mithilā's princess, for the quarter to which Sītā was taken is the very quarter the Wind's son has gone to." Three had come back; the fourth had not, and hope lived on through him. At the close of the sarga the poet sets the whole story in the south and on Hanumān, and points the way to the next sarga.