Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana

by Devdutt Pattanaik

  Shiva then said, ‘When yagna is done without tapasya, we exploit other people’s hunger to satisfy our own. Thus a corrupt society comes into being.’

  ‘Indeed. Tapasya is like the shaft of the bow. Yagna is like the string of the bow. Individually, they do not create the bow. To create the bow, the shaft has to bend and the string has to become taut.’

  ‘Too loose, the bow is useless. Too tight, the bow will break,’ said Shiva repeating Vishnu’s words when Prithu became king.

  ‘Come, let us create the bow that joins yagna and tapasya. Let this be the symbol of all relationships, of man and woman in marriage, of king and kingdom in kingship.’ So saying the Goddess took the form of Parvati, daughter of the mountains, and led Shiva down the slopes to the bustling city of Kashi on the riverbank. Here she became Annapoorna, goddess of food, and he transformed from Shiva, the hermit who has no hunger, to Shankara, the householder who cares for the hunger of others.

  From their conversations came a bow. He who could string this bow would be the perfect king. Shiva gave the bow to Janaka, patron of the Upanishad. Vishwamitra was keen that his students should see this bow, though he was not sure they would be able to string it. But there was no harm in trying.

  In 1609, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary named Jacobo Fenicio, who lived in the court of the Zamorin of Calicut and travelled the Malabar Coast, put together the first well-researched document on Hindu mythology for Western audiences (though the work of a plagiarist called Baldeus dated 1672 became more popular). In it, he records an oral retelling of Sita’s birth. Shiva serves Lanka for a while as its guardian and one day drops some ash near one of its gates from which springs a great tree. A branch of that tree finds its way to Mithila where Janaka sets it aflame as part of a yagna. From the fire emerges a girl, Sita, bearing a bow. The bow bears an inscription that she would marry the man who would break the bow.

  It is significant that Shiva, the god who knows no hunger, who lives atop Mount Kailas, a mountain of stone covered with snow with no vegetation, has as his wife Shakti, who is worshipped as Annapoorna, goddess of food, in Kashi, the city on the riverbank. Her kitchen is where the hermit and the householder make peace, for the hermit may not be hungry but he needs to be compassionate enough to care for those who are not hermits like him. He may burn Kama, the god of desire, and become Kamantaka, destroyer of desire, but she is Kameshwari, and Kamakhya, the goddess who appreciates and satisfies desire.

  Shiva and Shakti have two sons: Ganesha, the elephant-headed scribe, who satisfies those who seek food, and Kartikeya, the six-headed warrior, who defends those who fear they will become food. Thus with Shiva by her side, Shakti creates a forest where both predator and prey are happy.

  Sita Picks Up the Bow

  The bow of Shiva was so heavy that even a dozen men could not pick it up. So it was hauled on to a cart and taken to the armoury of Mithila where it was kept, admired from a distance by all the warriors who passed through the land. Every day Janaka would smear it with ash and light lamps around it in reverence.

  One day, Sita entered the armoury with her three sisters and a dozen maids. She had been given the responsibility of cleaning the entire palace. ‘Make sure no corner, no courtyard, no pillar, no wall, no roof or floor goes unattended. And don’t forget the weapons. They need to be wiped, so that the wood does not gather mould, and the metal does not rust,’ her mother had said. While the other girls busied themselves wiping the swords, the spears, the knives, the shields, the arrows, the bows and the maces, Sita headed straight for Shiva’s bow.

  ‘That’s too heavy,’ said one of the maids, ‘no man can pick it up.’

  ‘Still it needs to be cleaned,’ said Sita, effortlessly picking up the bow with one hand and vigorously wiping its undersurface with the other.

  News of this amazing feat reached the king and the queen. They rushed to the armoury and asked Sita to pick up the bow again. She did it with great ease, wondering what the fuss was all about.

  ‘She is too strong. Who will marry her now?’ wondered her mother with a smile on her face but concern in her heart.

  ‘Someone who is equally strong, or maybe stronger,’ said her father.

  ‘And wise,’ said Sunaina, knowing how much Janaka valued wisdom over strength. ‘The perfect king.’

  Janaka sent word across Aryavarta to kings and princes, inviting them to Mithila to string the bow of Shiva and claim both the bow and his daughter. Unlike in the Upanishad, when the city was full of sages seeking wisdom, the city was now full of princes who were motivated by power, property and pleasure.

  Many came, many tried, all failed.

  Amongst the many men who came to the city to pick up the bow was a man who came from faraway Lanka. He was taller than any man in the city, and his hair was thick and curly, his chest wide and his stomach firm. He smeared his body with ash, an indicator that he admired Shiva. No one looked at his face; his stare was so intense that everyone around him lowered their eyes. The man bent down to pick up the bow of Shiva and almost succeeded, but then he sneered, and lost balance; the bow pinned him to the ground like an angry python.

  Janaka and his warriors rushed to his aid, but failed to pull him out from underneath. As the ash-smeared, fiery-eyed stranger gasped for breath, Sita was sent for. She picked up the bow with one hand, and kept it aside. The man was not grateful. He roared, ‘If I could not pick up this bow, then no man can. Your daughter will die a lonely spinster, Janaka.’

  Unflustered by these words, Janaka said, ‘Alone maybe, but never lonely. She is not you.’

  The man disappeared and was never seen again. But there were whispers on the streets of the city that he was none other than Ravana, son of the rishi Vishrava, king of the dreaded rakshasas.

  The Valmiki Ramayana does not depict Sita as having the strength to lift the bow, but it is part of folklore. Films like Sita Swayamvar (1976) show this episode. Parashurama advises Janaka to make sure that the man who marries Sita has the ability to string the bow that Sita is able to pick up.

  The story of Ravana trying to pick up Shiva’s bow is also not found in the Valmiki Ramayana but is again part of folklore. It is one of the themes performed by Chhau dancers of Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar. The reason given for Ravana’s failure is his pride and overconfidence.

  The idea of Sita’s strength has its origin in Sita being seen as the Goddess. She is Kali, the sovereign goddess of nature, who chooses to be Gauri, demure and domesticated, for the benefit of humanity. This idea is made explicit in the Adbhut Ramayana and in Shakta literature.

  In folk songs from the Gangetic plains, Sita prays to Shakti, the Goddess, to get a good husband. When a demon approaches her, she gives him a letter to deliver to Shakti. In it she asks Shakti to kill the presumptuous demon. Shakti kills the demon as Durga, the warrior-goddess, enabling Sita to marry Ram.

  The Origin of Ravana

  The rakshasas considered themselves rakshak or guardians of the forest way of life that favours the strong and the cunning, where there are no rules, only brute force. They naturally did not care too much for the tapasya or yagna of the rishis, until Sumali saw Kubera, that is.

  Sumali was the leader of a pack of rakshasas who prowled the jungles of the south. One day, he encountered Kubera, leader of the yakshas, who had built a city of gold called Lanka on the island of Trikuta in the middle of the southern sea; he travelled around the world on a flying chariot, the Pushpak Vimana.

  Sumali learned that Kubera’s mother was a yaksha called Idavida but his father was a rishi called Vishrava. Knowledge of tapasya, yagna and the Vedas obtained from his father had enabled Kubera to become rich and powerful. Sumali desired a child as powerful and capable as Kubera. So he asked his daughter, Kaikesi, to go to Vishrava and have a child by him. That is how Ravana was born.

  Vishrava taught Ravana all about tapasya, yagna and the Vedas. Ravana expanded his mind so much that he needed ten heads to accommodate all his knowledge and twenty arms to accom
modate his strength.

  His grandfather Sumali constantly compared him with Kubera, so Ravana grew up with the desire to be stronger, faster and better than Kubera. He was determined to be the dominant one, feared and followed by all. It was not easy, for Kartavirya of the Haiheya clan had a thousand arms while he had only twenty. And Vali, the monkey-king of Kishkindha, had just one tail but it was stronger than all of Ravana’s arms put together.

  So Ravana invoked Brahma and obtained from him a pot of nectar that he hid in his navel. As long as he had this pot of nectar with him, he could not be killed.

  Ravana then invoked Shiva. He cut off his head and created out of it a lute called Rudra-veena. Pleased with this, Shiva gave him a crescent-shaped sword, the Chandrahas, that would always secure him victory in battle.

  Raising Chandrahas high above his head, Ravana overran the island of Trikuta with his rakshasa hordes, kicked Kubera out and declared himself king of Lanka and master of the Pushpak Vimana, much to Sumali’s delight and Vishrava’s disappointment.

  Kubera ran north, to the mountains, and sought refuge in Shiva’s shadow. There he built another city, Alanka, the opposite of Lanka, more popularly known as Alaka.

  ‘Both are your devotees, but whom do you prefer: Ravana or Kubera?’ Shakti asked Shiva.

  ‘Neither is really different from the other. Ravana grabs, while Kubera hoards. Both believe their identity stems from their property. That is why they value things rather than thoughts. That is why they refuse to expand their minds, even though both are sons of a brahmin,’ Shiva said.

  The earliest versions of Ravana’s life come from the Uttara-kanda, the last chapter of the Ramayana.

  In the fifteenth century, Madhav Kandali wrote the Saptakanda Ramayana in Assamese where he describes Ravana as the one who stole the staff of the god of death, the throne of the king of the gods, the noose of the god of the sea, the rays of the god of the moon, and who changed the planetary alignments at will. But unlike in Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century Avadhi Ramayana, in the Assamese version Kandali treats Ravana more sympathetically and is in awe of the rakshasa-king’s wealth and splendour.

  The words asura and rakshasa are often used interchangeably but they refer to two different groups of beings. Asuras are children of Kashyapa; they live under the ground and fight the devas. Rakshasas are children of Pulastya; they live in forests and fight humans. Kashyapa and Pulastya are Brahma’s mind-born sons.

  While Ravana is reviled as a demon, Kubera gets the status of a god. Ravana is associated with the south, the direction indicative of death, while Kubera is associated with the north, the direction indicative of permanence and stability. The rakshasas are associated with stealing and grabbing, while the yakshas are associated with hoarding.

  In his Jain Ramayana, Vimalasuri says that Ravana did not have ten heads. When he was born, his mother put a necklace with nine mirrors around his neck, each of which reflected his head. So his mother called him Dasanan, one with ten heads, and the name stuck.

  Kubera is a highly revered character in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain mythology. He is the potbellied treasurer of the devas, the only one whose vahana or mount is a human.

  While temple images show the Rudra-veena with only one head of Ravana, the Rudra-veena used by musicians always have two gourds (heads).

  The Descent of Ganga

  Vishwamitra, Kushadhvaja, the two princes of Ayodhya and the four princesses of Mithila made their way south to Videha along the Ganga. On the way, Vishwamitra told everyone the story of Ganga.

  King Sagara was performing the Ashwamedha yagna where the royal horse is let loose; all the lands that the horse traversed unchallenged would come under his rule. Fearing the horse would reach Amravati and that Sagara would become his master, Indra stole the horse and hid it in the hermitage of a tapasvi called Kapila.

  When the sons of Sagara finally traced the horse, they accused Kapila of theft. Kapila, until then lost in tapasya, was so annoyed that when he opened his eyes flames of tapa emerged from them and burned Sagara’s sons alive, reducing them to a pile of ash.

  ‘Will my sons never live again?’ cried Sagara.

  ‘They will,’ said Kapila, ‘provided you immerse these ashes in the Ganga, the river that flows in Amravati, the city of the devas, the river that you see in the sky as Akash Ganga, the Milky Way.’

  Sagara was too old to perform tapasya and use the power of siddha to compel Indra to let the celestial Ganga flow on earth. And he had no sons left who could do it for him. His widowed daughters-in-law were as yet childless. He saw no hope for his sons.

  But one of Sagara’s sons had two wives; they were determined to bear a child. So they called a sage and asked him to conduct a yagna that would yield a potion that could make barren women pregnant. When the potion was created, one queen drank the potion in her capacity as wife while the other queen made love to her pretending to be their late husband. From this union a child was born. But as no male had been involved in the conception, the child had no bones or nerves, only flesh and blood. The queens took this mass of flesh and blood to Kapila who used his siddha to create bones and nerves for the child. The child thus became complete and came to be known as Bhagiratha.

  Bhagiratha performed tapasya and got Indra to let Ganga leave the sky and flow on earth. Ganga laughed, ‘When I fall on earth, I will break all the mountains and sweep away all the forests, such is my force.’

  Fearing the worst, Bhagiratha invoked Shiva and begged him to break Ganga’s fall by catching the celestial river in the matted locks of his hair. Shiva agreed. Ganga jumped from the sky and fell straight on to Shiva’s head. Before she realized it, she had become completely entangled and trapped in his hair. ‘Let me go,’ she yelled.

  ‘Only if you treat the earth with respect,’ said Shiva.

  When Ganga agreed, Shiva let her flow out gently. She meandered her way to the sea, creating fertile riverbanks on either side. In her waters, Bhagiratha cast the ashes of his fathers, and he heard them cry out in gratitude.

  Vishwamitra told everyone, ‘Just as Ganga enables the rebirth of humanity and of vegetation, a woman enables the rebirth of a family, for she holds in her body the promise of the next generation.’

  ‘To be a wife, must a woman be tamed as Shiva tamed Ganga?’ asked Urmila.

  ‘Ah, look at the idea beyond the gender,’ Vishwamitra urged her. ‘To be a good spouse, wife or husband, the wilfulness of Ganga needs to be balanced with the serenity of Shiva. Only then will the river of marriage create fertile riverbanks.’

  Vishwamitra observed how much thought was provoked and wisdom realized each time Janaka’s daughters asked a question. The men who married them would indeed be fortunate.

  The early Vedic scriptures refer to the rivers of Punjab, Rajasthan and Jammu. The later Vedic scriptures refer to the Gangetic plains, indicating a spread of this culture eastwards. Some attribute this shift to the drying up of the mighty river Saraswati in the west (now the tiny river Ghaggar), which led to an eastward shift in culture. As the population increased, the culture spread southwards.

  Ganga’s story underlines the belief in rebirth which forms the cornerstone of philosophies that originated in India. In the earliest of Vedic scriptures, rebirth is implied and alluded to. The theme becomes dominant in the Upanishadic period. Belief in rebirth stems from a belief in impermanence. Nothing is forever: neither life nor death. This makes existence a merry-go-round that goes on forever. The tapasvis and shramanas proposed the idea of liberation (mukti, moksha, kaivalya) from the wheel of rebirths. These twin destinations of life and death are indicated by the fire in Kapila’s eyes and the water that comes with Ganga’s descent. Flames rise up, burning bonds to the wheel of rebirth; water flows down, ensuring the dead are reborn.

  That Vishwamitra tells this story of the sea and the river to Ram is an important part of his education. Ram needs to learn that life is a cycle. He is being told that one of his duties as a man is to marry and produce the ne
xt generation of kings, for nothing will last forever, not even his reign.

  The story of the two queens giving birth to Bhagiratha is found in Krittivasa’s Bengali Ramayana and the Bengali version of the Padma Purana, and suggests same-sex relationships were not unheard of in those days. It is based on a Tantric belief that soft tissues like flesh and blood come from the red seed of woman and hard tissues like bones and nerves come from the white seed of man. In the Krittivasa Ramayana, the boneless Bhagiratha waves out to Ashtavakra from a distance. Unable to figure out if the boy is taunting him or greeting him, Ashtavakra, sensitive about his deformed body, invokes the gods to reduce the boy to ash if he is making fun of his deformity or cure him if he is genuinely deformed. Bhagiratha is thus cured.

  The Breaking of the Bow

  When Vishwamitra and the youngsters reached Mithila, Sunaina rushed out to see her daughters, who excitedly told her everything they had seen and heard during their trip to and from the hermitage.

  Janaka welcomed Vishwamitra and his two young students. ‘You are indeed blessed to be students of both Vasishtha and Vishwamitra,’ he told Ram and Lakshman. ‘Tell me what matters more: the theoretical knowledge of Vasishtha or the practical training of Vishwamitra?’

  ‘Neither is better or worse,’ replied Ram. ‘The pursuit of theoretical knowledge develops the mind, while practical knowledge develops the body. Both have value and both come at a cost. It is aham that creates notions of better or worse. Atma observes it all, and smiles.’

  These words were like music to Janaka’s ears. The boy was not just strong and obedient; he was also wise. He hoped the boy would succeed in stringing the bow.

  When they entered the armoury, Janaka requested Vishwamitra to formally introduce Ram. ‘Let the bow of Shiva know who comes to string it.’