Valmiki’s wife enjoyed wearing Sita’s clothes for some time but then gradually lost interest, for Sita showed her what really matters in life: good food, decent shelter and a loving, supportive family.
What was once a thief’s den gradually became a poet’s hermitage. Valmiki busied himself turning the story of Ram into a song while Sita ate Shabari’s berries to her full satisfaction.
Ram asks for Sita to be abandoned in the forest in some retellings and near the hermitage of sages in other retellings. Typically, Sita is shown as forlorn and dependent on the sages who care for her, stripped of all her autonomy.
In ancient texts, Valmiki is identified as a rishi of the Pracheta lineage or Bhargava lineage. In medieval texts, he is identified as a member of a lower caste forced into becoming a thief to sustain his family. The two are not necessarily contradictory, for a rishi or seer can belong to any caste.
Ratnakar turns to Valmiki through the intervention of Narada in some versions or that of the Saptarishis, the set of seven celestial sages. This tale first comes from the Skanda Purana and later from the Ananda Ramayana and Adhyatma Ramayana.
In the Odia Bilanka Ramayana of Sarala Das, Valmiki is born when the sweat of Brahma falls on the sand (valu) of a riverbank.
The community of subordinate castes which includes sweepers and cobblers in North India have accepted Valmiki as their patron saint.
Ram is called ‘patita-pavana’, he who cleanses the unclean, rids the polluted of all pollution. This phrase can be traced to the hierarchy of pollution that led to denial of dignity and resources to castes in India associated with what were deemed unclean and menial tasks. Some reformers saw in Ram an icon for liberation from the caste hierarchy while others saw the Ramayana as the source of the caste hierarchy.
In the seventh century, a temple to Valmiki was erected in Champa (modern Vietnam) where he is venerated as the poet-sage and an incarnation of Vishnu.
Traditionally, Valmiki’s hermitage is said to be located in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh.
Valmiki’s first verse and later his entire Ramayana is composed in a metre known as Anustup.
Shambuka
Hearing how Ratnakar had turned into a rishi called Valmiki, many in Ayodhya decided to give up the householder’s way and become hermits. Priests became hermits; warriors became hermits; farmers, herders, craftsmen and traders became hermits. Ayodhya was in a crisis. ‘Our king left his wife in the jungle and his subjects are leaving their wives for the jungle,’ the people wailed.
One day, a priest came to Ram’s palace and cried, ‘Look, my young son is dying. There is no doctor around to heal him. Everyone is too busy performing tapasya to do yagnas. Familiar structures and hierarchies and edifices of society are crumbling. In such a world, the predictable order of life is bound to collapse. The young are bound to die before the old. You, Ram, are responsible for this chaos. Restore it, before things get worse.’
So Ram went to the forest and found there the leader of the tapasvis. It was a man called Shambuka. ‘Here I am no one’s servant. I am equal to all other creatures in the forest. I prefer the forest to the city. There is wisdom here,’ Shambuka said.
‘Do not romanticize the forest,’ said Ram. ‘In the jungle, no one helps the helpless. You have to take care of yourself, live in constant fear of starvation or predators. You have to let the strongest have all the mates, and you have to migrate when the seasons change. But in the city there is enough food to feed the weak. And there are social structures that grant you meaning, purpose and validity.’
‘I refuse to be inferior to anyone. In your city, Ram, I am inferior to the trader, the warrior and the priest. Why?’
‘Only in Shiva’s Kailas do no hierarchies exist. Only in Indra’s Swarga are all wishes fulfilled. I, Ram, struggle to create Vishnu’s Vaikuntha in Ayodhya where wishes can be fulfilled without the need for hierarchies. I seek to churn life with reality as the force and imagination as the counterforce. But for Ayodhya to survive, duties have to be performed. I cannot allow every householder to become a hermit. Return home, Shambuka, do your duty. You may return to the forest only after you have passed on your skills to the next generation. Else I will kill you, to deter all those who seek to follow you.’
‘You can kill me, Ram. But I will not return.’
So Ram raised his sword and beheaded Shambuka, just as Parashurama had beheaded Renuka and hacked away Kartavirya’s limbs. Rules of society had to be upheld by the perfect king, whether he, or his subjects, agreed with them or not.
When Ram returned home, the priest whose son had died in the meantime rushed to Ram’s side and said, ‘My son has miraculously come back from the dead. The god of death let him return, saying he was satisfied by the sacrifice of Shambuka.’
Ram looked at the boy and told him, ‘Be a brahmin like your father.’
‘Not like my father, but like Shambuka,’ said the son. ‘My father transmits the hymns of the Vedas, but does not understand what they mean. He enjoys dominating and feeling superior. No, I will not be like him. I choose brahmin-varna over brahmin-jati. I want to be a tapasvi like Shambuka and turn Ayodhya into Vaikuntha on earth.’
Ram, his royal hands still stained by Shambuka’s blood, felt reassured, for he knew Shambuka had been reborn.
The story of Shambuka is found in the Uttara-kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana.
Shambuka’s story is part of many ancient Sanskrit plays such as the one by Bhavabhuti, and medieval regional Ramayana s. In the plays, Ram’s actions are justified on the basis of royal duty. In bhakti literature, Shambuka benefits from the killing as the killer is God; he is liberated from the cycle of rebirths.
In modern times, Shambuka’s story has been turned into plays that show the caste bias of the Ramayana. E.V. Ramaswami considered it a tale that revealed Ram was not the good king everyone claimed he was. B.R. Ambedkar believed the tale was not so much about Ram’s character as it was about the unsustainability of the caste system that needed violence for its enforcement.
The Ramayana is not about favouring one caste group over another but about maintaining the status quo, for traditionally it was feared that shifts in caste would disrupt social stability. Yet, caste lines and caste hierarchies have always shifted across Indian history, with different caste groups, not just brahmins, but generally landowning communities, dominating different villages and adopting socially approved habits such as vegetarianism. This process is called ‘Sanskritization’ by Indian sociologists; a few Western sociologists prefer calling it ‘Brahminization’.
The Ramayana refers to several members of socially subordinate castes: the boatman Guha, the tribal Shabari and, some would argue, Valmiki, and the vanaras and the rakshasas. Ram’s relationship with each is different, determined more by emotion than by rules, except in the case of Shambuka, an episode that takes place after Ram is king.
The Twins
Sita gave birth in the forest in solitude. Had she been in the palace this would have been a great event; she would have been surrounded by her sisters, mothers-in-law, midwives and servants. Music would have been played, banners would have been unfurled, and sweets would have been distributed.
But here she was all alone, lying behind a rock, on soft, green grass, watching the stars all night, bearing the pain until Aruni, goddess of dawn, appeared in the sky and encouraged her to give the final push.
The rules of purity and impurity, so important in a palace, do not apply in the jungle. She had to be up on her feet immediately to take care of herself, eat the fruits and the berries and the roots and shoots that would give her enough nourishment to feed her baby. Valmiki was busy writing his song and so his wife had to forage for food for her children. She could not be expected to feed Sita too, and her newborn.
Valmiki named the boy Luv and watched over him while he slept so that Sita could have some time to herself, to bathe and gather firewood, collect some water, tend to her little kitchen garden and collect some riverba
nk clay to make a few pots and pans.
Soon the boy was able to crawl. One day, when Sita was away, and Valmiki was lost in writing the perfect verse describing the eve of Ram’s coronation, Luv simply wandered away. Valmiki suddenly felt an uneasy silence and realized the baby was gone. He searched his hut and Sita’s hut and found no trace of the boy. He was not behind the baskets or the pots. Had he wandered off beyond the fence made of tall stones? Had a fox or an eagle snatched him away? Valmiki was filled with dread and terror. Then he heard Sita returning, singing her favourite lullaby. In panic, he collected some kusha grass, bundled it in the shape of a doll, and used the power of siddha collected through months of tapasya to create a child who was the very likeness of Luv.
Sita walked in with Luv in her arms. ‘He just followed me to the river,’ she said with a smile. Then she saw the twin child in Valmiki’s lap. ‘Who is that?’
‘That,’ said Valmiki, rather sheepishly, ‘is your other son, Kush.’
Sita did not question or admonish Valmiki. She just picked Kush up and turning to Luv said, ‘See, you have a brother. A twin brother.’
While the Valmiki Ramayana talks of Sita giving birth to twins, Kathasaritsagar and Telugu folk songs speak of how Valmiki creates the second son from kusha grass.
The idea of symmetry is very important in Hinduism. The gods have two wives, one on either side. The Goddess is flanked by two sons (Gauri with Ganesha and Kartikeya), two brothers (Subhadra with Jagannatha and Balabhadra in Puri) or two warriors (Bhairav and Langurvir or Hanuman in the Sheravali temples of North India). So too the two sons of Sita create a sense of symmetry. Ravana’s ten heads create a visual asymmetry as there are four heads on one side of the main head and five on the other, indicating a lack of stability.
Mother Sita
The sons of Ram grew up in the shadow of the forest, under trees and atop rocks, bathing in rivers, and playing with deer. One could describe this as an idyllic life, as poets often do. But on days when the forest caught fire or the skies burst to pour relentless rain, or when the air was filled with the roars of hungry animals, or on days when neither Sita nor Gomti could find enough fruits or roots, it was hardly idyllic. So the children grew up tough, responsible, dependable, well versed with the rhythms of the forest and the tunes they heard Valmiki constantly hum.
The twins assumed that Valmiki was their father until Gomti’s children got upset and yelled, ‘He is ours. Get one of your own.’
So the twins went crying to Sita and asked her who their father was. Sita told them the story of Satyakama. He came to the Upanishad and wanted to be part of the conference. The rishis there asked him to name his father. He told the sages what his mother had told him: that she did not remember his father and so they should simply call him his mother’s son, Jabali, son of Jabala. Pleased with this display of honesty and absence of awkwardness and embarrassment, the rishis named him Satyakama, and welcomed him to the Upanishad. ‘I want you to be like Satyakama,’ said Sita. ‘Be satisfied being Sita’s sons.’ After that day, the boys did not miss their father.
With Sita, they learned the secrets of the forest, that all actions – good or bad – have consequences. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the deer eats every day but cannot ever eat to a full stomach because when the stomach is full you cannot run. And the tiger eats once in ten days but when he eats he eats to a full stomach. Thus, nature does not favour either prey or predator.’ Luv and Kush learned to appreciate the hunger of the predator and the fear of the prey. They understood the nature of trees, why they brought forth leaves and flowers and fruit. At night, they heard their mother tell stories of devas and asuras and Valmiki sing of rishis.
The boys grew up watching every move of Sita’s. Every morning she made her way to the river to bathe and fetch water. She spent all day repairing and cleaning the house, stocking it with food and keeping the fire burning. There were always fresh banana leaves in the house to serve food, and hollow gourds filled with sweet river water and garlands of fragrant flowers around everyone’s neck. She never rested. She always smiled. Chores were never a burden.
Unlike Gomti, Sita never tied her hair, allowing it to fly in the wind. Unlike Gomti, who constantly complained and kept fighting with Valmiki, not once did Sita express resentment about her life. ‘Being satisfied with life is but an option. You can demand more too if you wish. That is also the hallmark of humanity,’ Gomti kept reminding Luv and Kush. Sita did not argue.
When they were old enough, Sita taught the boys how to make fire by striking rocks together, how to collect firewood from dry branches on the forest floor, how to make sharp tools for hunting, how to build traps, how to swing swords, hurl spears and, finally, how to make and use a bow. ‘Hunt for food. Hunt to defend. But never hunt for sport,’ she told her sons. ‘And always check what you are hunting. Do not assume it is a deer you hear drinking water on the other side of the bush; it just might be a boy collecting water in a pot.’
The boys were very different from each other in character. Luv loved mathematical formulae, while Kush enjoyed the rules of grammar. Luv enjoyed the chase, while Kush enjoyed ambush. Luv loved conversation, while Kush preferred silence. Both were good archers; but while Luv excelled in striking moving targets, Kush excelled in striking distant ones. Sita never compared one to the other. ‘All trees in the forest are unique and all trees are valid,’ she would say. She would also remind them, ‘Plants compete for sunlight and animals for mates. Blessed with humanity, only you and I have the power to abandon competition. To do so is dharma.’
Sita taught her sons the value of fire, how it could be contained in the kitchen hearth, which she called the first yagna-shala. She taught them to worship the pot that enables humans to drink water wherever and whenever they wished. She taught them hymns she had learned from rishis of the Upanishad. At night, she taught them how to read the stars. And whenever they were hungry, they knew, in Sita’s hand would always be a fruit, or a nut, or a berry. No one went hungry when Sita was around.
Sita functions as a single mother. Kunti in the Mahabharata, Jabala of the Upanishads, and Shakuntala, mother of Bharata, after whom India is called Bharat, are also single mothers.
Most writers present Sita’s life in the forest in a tragic mood as they equate life in the forest with poverty, not wisdom. They forget the wisdom of India that regards wealth only in functional terms and not as an indicator of self-worth. The sage is never poor even though he has nothing.
The Mahabharata tells the story of how Ashtavakra mistakes his grandfather Uddalaka to be his father until his uncle Shvetaketu corrects him, much like Valmiki’s sons correct Luv and Kush.
The story of Satyakama Jabala comes from the Chandogya Upanishad, dated to the seventh century BCE.
In Wayanad, Kerala, there is a temple of Sita with her two sons. The local Ramayana has many twists and turns not found in the Valmiki Ramayana. The locals are convinced the Ramayana took place in and around Wayanad.
Gandharva
One day, Sita heard a lute being played. It sounded like Ravana’s Rudra-veena. Memories stirred. She let them rise; they made her smile. They were children of the past, now independent, who visited her from time to time. Leaving Luv and Kush with Valmiki, still busy writing his song, she went to find out the source of the music.
She found a handsome man playing it. A rakshasa? A gandharva? A rishi? He looked like Ravana might have looked in his younger days.
‘Ah, you have finally come. Every bee and butterfly, every ant and termite, every migrating bird and deer speaks of your tranquil beauty. It inspired me to make this music and play it for you. I hoped it would bind your heart and draw you towards me.’
‘Nice music, child. Who are you? Introduce yourself. You clearly know me.’
‘Names do not matter. Just know that I am a man who offers you his music. My heart is yours. My life is yours. Make me yours.’
‘I am Ram’s and he is mine. We are complete with each other. I need no other.�
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‘But he has abandoned you. And you are free of the fetters of marriage. Do not cling to him. Come to me.’
‘It is not whether he binds me or not. It is whether I want to or not. And I do not want to. I do not need to. With or without Ram, I am complete in myself. Ram reflects my completion as I reflect his. You, who are incomplete, should not assume my incompleteness, just because I am alone in the forest.’
The music stopped. The man frowned and snarled, like Surpanakha. But Sita was not afraid. These were memories, children of the past, who having grown up sometimes return to taunt the present.
Fidelity is often seen in modern times as a burden imposed mostly on women by men. But for many women and men it is also an expression of love.
Sita, daughter of Janaka, embodies wisdom. Wisdom is all about outgrowing hunger, be it physical, emotional, intellectual or social.
Jain scriptures tell the story of Rajulmati, wife of the Tirthankara Neminath, who pines for her husband who has become an ascetic, and rejects the advances of youths who wish to seduce her with words of profound wisdom. A similar story is also told of Mallika, the princess who rejects all men who wish to marry her and becomes Tirthankara Mallinath.
From the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad comes the hymn of completeness (purnamadah purnamidam). It describes the brahman as being complete, creating completeness, and remaining complete even when it gives birth to completeness.
Hanuman’s Ramayana
Finally, Valmiki completed the Ramayana. He showed it to Sita and she loved it. He showed it to his wife and she praised it. Then he showed it to Narada, the sage who keeps travelling between heaven and earth, but he was not impressed. ‘It is good, but Hanuman’s is better,’ he said.
Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana Page 31