नारदस्य युगधर्मकथनम्

Rāghava heard all of the brahmin's piteous lament, full of sorrow and grief, and burning with grief himself, for his subjects' sorrow was his own, he summoned his ministers, Vasiṣṭha and Vāmadeva, his brothers and the townsmen. He did not brush aside the brahmin's charge but called his council at once, as a responsible king should. Then eight brahmins were shown in with Vasiṣṭha, and they greeted the godlike king with "May you prosper!", the customary blessing of a royal court. They were Mārkaṇḍeya, Maudgalya, Vāmadeva, Kāśyapa, Kātyāyana, Jābāli, Gautama and Nārada. Naming them adds dignity to the assembly, and a varied company it was: Mārkaṇḍeya the long-lived, Jābāli who had argued as an unbeliever in the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa, and Nārada, who first told Vālmīki the story of Rāma; Vasiṣṭha, the family teacher, is named first. These bulls among brahmins were all given seats, and Rāma, king though he was, saluted the great seers with joined palms and sat down; the ministers and townsmen too took their seats as was fitting. Seers, ministers and citizens were all present, so a grave matter would be decided together. When all those radiant men were seated, Rāghava told them everything: "This brahmin is besieging my gate," he said, sitting at the royal door and refusing to leave.

Hearing the troubled king's words, Nārada, who travels all the worlds and knows all things, himself gave a fitting answer in the presence of the seers. "Hear, O king, how this boy's untimely death has come about, and when you have heard, do what must be done, delight of the Raghus." He did not only explain the cause but urged Rāma to act. Then he set out the history age by age. "Long ago, in the Kṛta age, O king, only brahmins practised austerities; no one who was not a brahmin practised austerity in any way. In that age, radiant, filled with Brahman and clouded by no fault, all were born free from death and able to see far." In the Kṛta age there was no untimely death, and people could see past, present and future. Nārada's account rests on a particular social vision, that in each age dharma has its fixed order and that breaching it brings harm. Here the reader meets the social thinking of the Rāmāyaṇa's own time, and a modern reader should read its view of the class order with a critical eye; through Nārada the poet sets out the traditional view of the law-books.

"Then came the age called Tretā," Nārada went on, "of men strong in body, in which kṣatriyas are born endowed with austerity as in the earlier age; those great-souled men of the Tretā age had excelled in valour and austerity in their former lives. Brahmin and kṣatriya, the higher and the lower, were of equal strength in both ages, and seeing no further difference between them, people established the accepted order of the four classes. In that age, radiant, full of dharma and unclouded, unrighteousness set one foot on the earth, and joined with unrighteousness, vigour grows dim. What had been meat, passion and gross defilement for those before became untruth, and set one foot on the earth. Having set untruth down on the earth as its first foot, unrighteousness brought about a fixed limit to the span of life. Yet even when untruth had been set down on earth, people devoted to truth and dharma did only what was good. In the Tretā age brahmins and kṣatriyas practised austerities, and the other people practised service." Here is the idea of dharma standing on four feet: four in the Kṛta age, three in the Tretā, two in the Dvāpara and one in the Kali. As unrighteousness enters, in Nārada's view, both life and vigour decline. Untruth is the first foot of unrighteousness, for falsehood is the root of every fault, a firm principle of Indian ethics, and by linking meat and passion with untruth Nārada ties violence and restless passion to falsehood. Life, deathless in the Kṛta age, was limited in the Tretā. That brahmin and kṣatriya were equal in strength in the Tretā age honours Rāma's own age, in which a kṣatriya, Rāma himself, was the guardian of dharma.

"For the vaiśya and the śūdra," Nārada continued, "service became their own highest dharma, and the śūdras especially honoured all the classes. Meanwhile, as unrighteousness and untruth came upon them, the earlier classes declined once more, best of kings. Then unrighteousness brought down its second foot, and from that arose the age called Dvāpara. In that Dvāpara age, as the age declined, unrighteousness and untruth grew, bull among men. In this Dvāpara age austerity entered the vaiśyas; so, through the three ages in turn, austerity entered three classes, and in three classes dharma was established. But in the course of these ages the śūdra does not gain that dharma of austerity, bull among men. A man of the lowest class, best of kings, is practising very great austerity; it is only in the Kali age to come that austerity will arise among those born as śūdras." By Nārada's account, the right to practise austerity spread through the classes age by age, and for the śūdra it was prescribed only in the Kali age. The sequence of ages shows dharma's gradual decline, whole in the Kṛta, three-quarters in the Tretā, half in the Dvāpara. Seen from today this passage is contentious, but the retelling presents the original's view as it stands, and the description of śūdras honouring all classes is the order of the Tretā age as Nārada understood it. And his present tense, "is practising", shows that while stating a general rule he was pointing at something happening now.

Then Nārada made the cause plain. "Even in the Dvāpara age, O king, austerity by one born a śūdra is a grave wrong; how much more in the Tretā! At the border of your realm, O king, a man of great austerity and evil mind is practising austerity today, and that is why this boy has died. Whatever unrighteousness or wrongful deed an evil-minded man commits in a king's realm or in his city becomes the root of that realm's misfortune, and that king swiftly goes to hell; there is no doubt of it." In Nārada's view the breach of the age's dharma was itself the cause of the untimely death. The king's responsibility is stated again: the fruit of unrighteousness among the people falls on the king too, in the next world as well as this, for a king's duty reaches beyond this life. So the brahmin's charge in the last sarga, that untimely death comes through the king's fault, was upheld by Nārada, but the fault lay not in Rāma's own conduct; it lay in the wrongdoing of someone in his kingdom. Rāma's duty was now clear: to find that śūdra ascetic and restore the order of dharma.

Nārada reminded him of a root principle of kingship. "A king who protects his subjects according to dharma receives a sixth part of their learning, their austerity and their good deeds. How can one who enjoys that sixth part fail to protect his people? So, tiger among men, search your own realm, and wherever you see wrongdoing, set about putting it right. Then dharma will grow, men's lives will lengthen, and this boy will live again, best of men." Nārada's counsel had two parts, the diagnosis of the cause and the direction for the remedy. It suggests that Rāma should go out himself to search his kingdom, and in the next sarga he does, in the Puṣpaka chariot. The hope of the boy's return to life was also given, opening a way to end the brahmin's grief, so that duty and compassion meet here. The principle of the sixth part makes plain the bond between king and people: the king takes his share, so protection is his debt; as the law-books say, to take taxes without protecting is a kind of theft.