स्वर्गिणः शवभक्षणदर्शनम्

Agastya went on: "Long ago, Rāma, in the Tretā age, there was a vast forest that stretched a hundred yojanas on every side, without beasts and without birds. I came into that forest empty of men, gentle one, practising the highest austerity, meaning to range through it. I could not begin to describe it, with its fruits and roots so pleasant to taste and its trees of every form. In its midst lay a lake a yojana long, thronged with geese and kāraṇḍava ducks and graced by cakravāka birds, covered with lotuses and water-lilies and free of weed, a real wonder, its water sweeter than any other, clear, untroubled and glorious, and alive with flocks of birds. Near the lake stood a great and wonderful hermitage, ancient and deeply holy, yet with no ascetics in it. There I spent a summer night, best of men." The description holds a quiet contradiction worth noticing: the forest is said to have neither beasts nor birds, yet the lake teems with birds; the forest is empty of men, and the hermitage, though holy, is deserted. This air of mystery prepares for the strange sight to come. Agastya, himself an ascetic, had gone into the empty forest for the sake of solitary austerity, and his words "I could not describe it" let his own wonder show. The string of epithets heaped on the lake suggests that it is something divine, and the emptiness of the ancient, holy hermitage is the very riddle on which the story turns.

"I rose early at daybreak and went down to the lake," Agastya continued, "and there, O king, I saw a corpse lying in the water, well nourished and without a stain, in great beauty. I stood a while on the shore turning it over in my mind, wondering, lord, what this could be. Then, after a moment, I saw a divine and wonderful sight: a splendid aerial chariot yoked with swans and swift as thought, and in it, joy of the Raghus, a dweller of heaven of surpassing radiance. A thousand apsarases in divine ornaments waited on him. Some sang lovely songs, others played drums, lutes and tabors, others danced, and still others, lotus-eyed, fanned his face with costly whisks on golden handles, white as moonbeams. Then he left his lion-throne, as the sun leaves the peak of Meru, and came down." That the corpse should be well fed and spotless is itself astonishing: a dead body, yet clean and beautiful. The singing, music and dancing of the apsarases are marks of this heavenly being's greatness, and they make what he is about to eat seem all the more shocking. The simile of the sun coming down from Meru's summit likens his leaving the throne to the sun's descent from the mountain. Agastya neither runs from the corpse nor takes fright; he stands and thinks, and in that the steadiness of an ascetic shows. A chariot drawn by swans and moving as fast as thought reveals the merit of the one who owns it.

"While I watched, Rāma, that heaven-dweller stepped down from his chariot and devoured the corpse, joy of the Raghus. When he had eaten as much as he wished of that plentiful, rich flesh, he went down into the lake to touch its water, and when he had touched the water as the rite prescribes, he began to climb back into his splendid chariot." The poet tells this grim scene with restraint: there is no long description, only the sequence of acts, the descent, the eating, the washing, the climb back. The phrase "as prescribed" shows that the heavenly being observes the proper ritual of sipping and washing; he is no rākṣasa but a man of merit who knows dharma, and yet he does this. That contradiction is exactly what moves Agastya to question him. In Agastya's eyes the sight was utterly astonishing, a divine person feeding on dead flesh; and he eats without shame and without haste, while "as much as he wished" shows how fierce his hunger was.

"Seeing that godlike being climbing up," said Agastya, "I spoke to him, best of men: 'Who are you, you who look like a god? And the food you eat is abhorrent. Why do you eat this, gentle one? Tell me. How could one honoured by the gods come to such a state and such food? It is a wonder, gentle one, and I want to hear the truth of it. I cannot think this corpse fit food for you.' Thus questioned by me out of curiosity, lord of men, the dweller of heaven heard all I said and told me everything as it had happened, in gentle and truthful words." There is no reproach in Agastya's question, only a wish to know; by addressing the stranger as "godlike" he keeps his respect intact. "I cannot think this fit food for you" shows the sage's discernment: he passes no judgement, he only asks the reason. That the answer came in gentle and truthful speech tells us the story to follow in the next sarga will be both true and pleasing to hear. So the poet leaves a mystery standing at the sarga's end and opens it only in the next; even who this heavenly being is, and whose son, is learned only later.