सीतायाः सन्देशो विलापश्च

When she heard Lakṣmaṇa's cruel words, Janaka's daughter Vaidehī sank into the deepest despair and fell to the ground. For a moment she lay as if senseless, her eyes clouded with tears; then she spoke to Lakṣmaṇa in a piteous voice. "Surely, Lakṣmaṇa, the Creator made this body of mine only for sorrow, since today I seem to be sorrow itself in bodily form. What sin did I commit in some former life, whose wife did I part from him, that I, pure in my conduct and faithful, should be abandoned by the king?" She looked for the cause of her grief in a former birth, for she knew for certain that in this life she had done no wrong. "Once before I lived in a hermitage, following in Rāma's footsteps, and I accepted it gladly, Lakṣmaṇa, even with all its hardship. But how shall I live in a hermitage now, gentle one, left all alone? Whom shall I tell my sorrow to, sunk in sorrow as I am? And what shall I say to the sages, my lord? What wicked thing have I done, for what reason has the great-souled Rāghava cast me off? I would give up my life this very day in the waters of the Jāhnavī, Lakṣmaṇa, but then my husband's royal line would be lost." The earlier exile had been hard too, but then Rāma was with her; now she was alone and helpless. Her dread of the sages' question shows her shame and her care for her honour. And what held her back from taking her own life was not concern for herself but Rāma's line, which she carried in her womb. Even in this grief she thought of preserving her husband's dynasty; that is the height of a faithful wife's devotion.

"Do as you have been commanded, Lakṣmaṇa," she said, easing his reluctance: let him obey the king and not grieve on her account. "Leave me here to my sorrow and abide by the king's order. But hear what I have to say. Bow your head at the feet of all my mothers-in-law alike, with joined palms, and wish the king well from me. Bowing low, Lakṣmaṇa, say this to all of them. And to the king, who is devoted to dharma, say this: 'You know, Rāghava, that Sītā is truly pure, that she is devoted to you with the utmost devotion and always seeks your good. It was fear of dishonour among the people that made you abandon me, hero. Whatever reproach, whatever slander has arisen against you, I too must help to remove it, for you are my highest refuge.'" In her message there was no blame and no outcry, only a reminder of her own purity and her willingness to help in clearing Rāma's name. "You are my highest refuge" proclaims her unshakable faith: even cast off, she counted Rāma alone her shelter. She gave his motive its plain name, fear of dishonour, and there is a gentle reproach in it, but her compassion outweighs it. Once again she honoured all her mothers-in-law alike, Kaikeyī included.

"Say this to the king as well," she went on. "'Treat the citizens always as you treat your brothers. That is your highest duty, and from it comes unsurpassed fame. Whatever merit one gains by righteous conduct towards the citizens, O king, may it be yours. As for me, bull among men, I do not grieve for my own body. Act, Raghunandana, so that there is no slander among the citizens.' For to a woman her husband is her god, her husband is her kinsman, her husband is her teacher, and so, even at the cost of her life, she must above all do what is dear to her husband. Tell Rāma this from me; this is the whole of my message. And look at me today before you go: my season has passed, and I am carrying a child." Sītā counselled Rāma in nothing but a king's duty, to cherish his subjects as brothers; she took no account of her own sorrow, only of his fame, and in saying she did not grieve for her body she offered herself up. The verse "to a woman her husband is her god" became, in Indian tradition, almost a maxim of wifely devotion. Her last request is heartbreaking: she asked Lakṣmaṇa to see for himself that she was with child, so that he could bear witness that she carried Rāma's offspring, testimony that would matter when the slander came to be answered.

As Sītā spoke, Lakṣmaṇa, sick at heart, bowed his head to the ground and could not say a word. Weeping aloud, he walked round her in reverence, and after a moment's thought he said, "What are you asking of me, fair lady? I have never before looked upon your form, sinless one; I have only ever seen your feet. How can I look at you now, here in the forest, without Rāma?" His words are remarkable: he had never looked even at her face, only at her feet, revering her as a mother. With that he bowed to her and went back to the boat. He boarded it again and urged the boatman on, and when he reached the northern bank, weighed down with grief and almost stupefied by sorrow, he quickly climbed into the chariot. He turned back again and again to look at Sītā, who writhed on the far bank like one without a protector, and then Lakṣmaṇa drove away; even as he went, his mind stayed with her. Sītā, stricken, watched the chariot in the distance, and Lakṣmaṇa, again and again, and grief overwhelmed her. The scene is seen from both sides: on one bank Lakṣmaṇa going away and looking back, on the other Sītā watching the chariot recede, and between them the Gaṅgā.

The sarga closes with a verse in a longer metre. Bowed down by the weight of her sorrow, the glorious, faithful lady, the bearer of renown, saw no protector anywhere, and lost in grief she wept aloud in that forest ringing with the cries of peacocks. She who bore such fame was now without a lord, and her weeping mingled with the peacocks' calls, as though the very sounds of nature kept her company in her grief. Sorrow is a heavy load, and under it she was bent. Lakṣmaṇa was gone, the chariot was far away, and Sītā stood alone on the bank of the Gaṅgā; the emptiness of the scene mirrors the emptiness of her heart. The poet adds no comment, only letting her cries blend with the calls of the forest. This verse is the climax of the sarga's pathos; from here, with the coming of Vālmīki, consolation begins.