Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana

by Devdutt Pattanaik

  Book One: Birth

  ‘She was born of the earth and raised amongst sages.’

  Foundling in the Furrow

  It was the start of the sowing season. The fences separated the farm from the jungle. Outside the blackbuck roamed free; within the farmer would decide what was crop and what was weed.

  The farmers invited their king Janaka to be the first to plough the land with a golden hoe. To the sound of bells and drums and conch-shell trumpets, the king shoved the hoe into the ground and began to till the land. Soft, moist earth, dark as the night sky, was pushed away on either side to reveal a furrow. As the furrow extended itself, firmly and fast, the king felt confident and the farmers were pleased.

  Suddenly the king stopped. The furrow revealed a golden hand: tiny fingers rising up like grass, as if drawn by the sunshine. Janaka moved the dirt away, and found hidden within the soft, moist earth a baby, a girl, healthy and radiant, smiling joyfully, as if waiting to be found.

  Was it an abandoned child? No, said the farmers, convinced it was a gift from the earth-goddess to their childless king. But this was not fruit of his seed – how could she be his daughter? Fatherhood, said Janaka, springs in the heart, not from a seed.

  Janaka picked up the infant, who gurgled happily in his arms. Placing her close to his heart, he declared, ‘This is Bhumija, daughter of the earth. You may call her Maithili, princess of Mithila, or Vaidehi, lady from Videha, or Janaki, she who chose Janaka. I will call her Sita, she who was found in a furrow, she who chose me to be her father.’

  Everyone felt gladness in their hearts. The ceremony was truly successful. The childless king had returned to the palace a father. No harvest could be better.

  Videha is located in modern-day Bihar (Mithila region) suggesting the narrative has the Gangetic plains as its base.

  Vedic hymns refer both to herding and agricultural activities. The ritual of tilling the soil was closely associated with the Vedic yagna Vajapeya that was meant for ‘vaja’ or food.

  Furrows do not exist in nature. Furrows indicate agriculture, the birth of human civilization. Sita then embodies the fruit of nature’s domestication and the rise of human culture.

  In the Vedas, there is reference to Sita, goddess of fertility.

  Janaka is a family name. The first Janaka was Nimi. His son was Mithi, who founded the city of Mithila.

  In the Mahabharata’s Ramopakhyan, Sita is Janaka’s biological daughter. In many regional versions, Sita is found in a box or the earth-goddess, Bhudevi, appears and gifts the child to Janaka. There are even versions such as the Jain Vasudevahindi and the Kashmiri Ramavatara-charita where Sita is actually a child of Ravana’s, cast away into the sea and passed from the sea through the earth to Janaka.

  In the Ananda Ramayana, Vishnu gives a king called Padmaksha a fruit that contains a baby, who is Lakshmi incarnate. She is named Padmavati who eventually becomes Sita.

  That Sita is not born from a mother’s womb makes her ‘ayonija’. Children born so are considered special. They defy death.

  A rationalist would say that Sita was perhaps a foundling, a girl child abandoned.

  The district of Sitamarhi in Bihar is associated with the field where Sita was ploughed out by Janaka.

  A Daughter Called Shanta

  Dashratha, king of Ayodhya in the land of Kosala, also had a daughter. Her name was Shanta, she who is peaceful. But she did not bring Dashratha peace, for he wanted sons.

  So Dashratha went north to Kekaya and asked King Ashwapati for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It was foretold the princess would bear an illustrious son. The king objected, ‘Kaushalya is already your wife, and has given you a daughter. If my Kaikeyi marries you she will just be a junior queen.’

  ‘But if she bears me a son, he will be king and she will be queen mother,’ argued Dashratha, to convince Ashwapati, who let him marry Kaikeyi.

  Unfortunately, Kaikeyi gave birth to neither son nor daughter. So Dashratha married a third time, a woman named Sumitra, but even she failed to produce a child.

  Dashratha was filled with despair. Who would he pass on the crown to? And how would he face his ancestors, in the land of the dead, across the river Vaitarni, for they would ask him if he had left behind sons who would help them be reborn?

  That is when Rompada, king of Anga, came to him and said, ‘My kingdom is struck with drought because Indra, ruler of the sky, god of rain, is afraid of one of my subjects, Rishyashringa, son of Vibhandaka, a mighty hermit. This same Rishyashringa, who causes drought in my kingdom, is, I am sure, the cause of your childlessness. The crisis will end only if my daughter succeeds in seducing this hermit and turns him into a householder, thus tempering his powers to Indra’s satisfaction. But I have no daughter, Dashratha. Let me adopt yours. And if she succeeds in bringing rain to Anga, I will make sure that Rishyashringa compels Indra to give you sons.’

  Suddenly, the daughter became the answer to Dashratha’s problem.

  The story of Shanta is elaborated in the Mahabharata and in many Puranas. In some versions, like the southern manuscript of the Valmiki Ramayana, she is the daughter of Dashratha adopted by Rompada and in other versions she is Rompada’s daughter with no association with Dashratha. The narratives are not clear if Kaushalya is the mother.

  In Upendra Bhanja’s Odia Baidehi-bilasa, courtesans led by Jarata seduce Rishyashringa and bring him on a boat to perform the yagna that brings rain to Anga. Mighty pleased, Dashratha offers his daughter, Shanta, and brings him to Kosala to perform a yagna that will give him sons. The story reveals a comfort with eroticism and courtesans who were part of the temple devadasi culture that thrived in coastal Odisha, especially in the Jagannath temple in Puri. Tulsidas in his Avadhi Ram-charit-manas, which was meant to serve as devotional literature, does not mention Rishyashringa at all. In the Sanskrit Adhyatma Ramayana, which focuses on metaphysics, Rishyashringa makes an appearance, but the tale of seduction is kept out.

  In a male-dominated society, when a couple does not bear a child, the problem is first attributed to the wife, and only then to the husband.

  In Hindu mythology, fertility of the land is closely linked with the fertility of the people who reside on the land, especially the king. Thus the story connects the failure of the rains with the failure of the king’s ability to father sons.

  The tale correlates drought with monastic practices. Celibacy affects the rains adversely. This reflects the discomfort with rising monastic orders. Even the hermit Shiva is turned into a householder, Shankara, by the Goddess, to ensure that the snow of the mountains melts to create a river – Ganga – on whose banks civilization can thrive.

  The Abduction of Rishyashringa

  Vibhandaka was called a rishi, a seer, because he saw what others did not. He knew that food turns into sap, then blood, then flesh, then nerve, then bone, then marrow and finally seed. When seed is shed, new life comes into being. No living creature has control over the shedding of their seed, except humans, especially men.

  When seed is retained in the body it turns into ojas. Ojas can be turned into tapa through the practice of tapasya. Tapa is fire of the mind, generated through meditation and contemplation. With tapa comes siddha, the power to control nature: the power to compel gods to bring down rain, make barren women fertile, sterile men virile, to walk on water and fly without wings. Vibhandaka was determined to perform tapasya, churn tapa, acquire siddha, control nature and make her dance to his tune.

  Fearful that Vibhandaka would succeed and use siddha against him, Indra sent an apsara, a damsel from his paradise, to seduce him. The mere sight of this apsara caused Vibhandaka to lose control of his senses. Semen squirted out of his body – much against his will – and fell on the grass. A doe ate this. So powerful was the semen that it made the doe pregnant. She gave birth to a human male child with antlers, who came to be known as Rishyashringa.

  Vibhandaka saw Rishyashringa as a symbol of his personal failure, and so raised him with rage and ambition, wi
thout any knowledge of women. He drew a line around his hermitage; nothing feminine could cross this line and approach his son: neither a cow nor a mare, neither goose, ewe, doe nor sow. No flowers bloomed here, there was no nectar or fragrance; it was a barren land. Any woman who dared cross the line around Vibhandaka’s hermitage instantly burst into flames, which is why Indra could not send his apsaras to seduce Rishyashringa.

  Furious, Indra had refused to come anywhere near Anga, where the hermitage was located, until the ruler of Anga resolved this problem. The resulting drought compelled Rompada to seek out the women of his land. But no man was willing to risk the life of his wife or sister or daughter. Even the king’s queens, concubines and courtesans refused to help. That is why Rompada needed Shanta, renowned not just for her beauty but also for her intelligence and her courage.

  Shanta waited for the few hours in the day when Vibhandaka left the hermitage to gather food from the forest. During that window of opportunity, she stood outside the gates and sang songs of love and passion, drawing Rishyashringa towards her. The young, innocent ascetic wondered what kind of a creature she was. At first he feared her sight, then he allowed himself to enjoy her song, and finally he had the courage to talk to her.

  ‘I am a woman,’ revealed Shanta, ‘a different kind of a human. You can create life outside your body but I can create life inside mine.’ Rishyashringa did not understand. ‘If you step out,’ said Shanta, ‘I will show you.’ Rishyashringa was too afraid to cross the threshold. So from afar he watched Shanta reveal the secrets of her body, arousing in him emotions and desires and a deep sense of loneliness he had never known before.

  When Rishyashringa told his father about this creature, Vibhandaka warned him, ‘She is a monster who seeks to enslave you. Stay away from her.’

  But try as he might, Rishyashringa could not stop thinking about her. After days and nights of suffering, he could not hold back any more. When his father was away, he found the courage to cross the boundary of Vibhandaka’s hermitage, and offered himself freely to Shanta. She returned triumphant to Anga with Rishyashringa in her arms.

  While the story of the ‘Lakshman-rekha’ fired popular imagination, the story of the ‘Vibhandaka-rekha’ did not. Lakshman’s line seeks to secure a woman’s chastity. Vibhandaka’s line seeks to secure a man’s celibacy. The former is necessary for social order. The latter threatens the very order of nature and culture.

  The tension between the hermit’s way and the householder’s way is made explicit in this story. The hermit’s way threatens the world by not producing children and not allowing rain to fall. The solution lies with sex and marriage.

  The Puranas are full of stories about how a beautiful nymph seduces the celibate hermit. Tapasvi means fire (tapa) ascetic, and apsara means water (apsa) nymph.

  The association of women with fertility is one reason that in later times women were viewed as temptresses and distractions from spiritual activities that came to be increasingly associated with celibacy.

  Hindu temples are incomplete unless they are embellished with images of happy couples making love. Marriage is critical for both the deity and the devotee. Celibacy as the route to divinity was initially viewed rather suspiciously, but later it became the dominant mode of religious expression because of monastic orders such as Buddhism, Jainism and Vedanta acharyas, as well as the global spread of Catholic and Victorian values in colonial times.

  The Rishyashringa story is also found in the Buddhist Jataka tales such as the Nalini Jataka and Alambusha Jataka indicating this struggle between monastic celibacy, popularized by Buddhist monks, and the need for children in society. In these stories, Vibhandaka is the Bodhisattva (Buddha in a former life) and Shanta is identified as Nalini. In the Mahavastu scripture, Rishyashringa is identified as Ekashringa, the Bodhisattva, and Nalini is Yashodhara (Buddha’s wife) in her previous life.

  Until the rise of Buddhism, the hermit was clearly someone who stayed outside the city, in the forest. The Buddha brought the monastic way into the city, creating a tension. The resolution of this tension manifests itself in the number of fertility images of trees, pots overflowing with vegetation, fat men and bejewelled women in Buddhist shrines.

  Rishyashringa is linked to the sacred city of Shringeri in Tamil Nadu.

  It is significant that the great epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, reached their final form in the centuries that followed the rise of Buddhism, whose founder, born a prince, abandoned his wife and infant son, to start a monastic order. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are all about family; they strive to show how it is possible for a hermit to live a householder’s life; there is no need to become a monk. The struggle between the hermit’s way and the householder’s way forms the cornerstone of Indian thought. They manifest as Shiva’s way and Vishnu’s way.

  Dashratha Gets Four Sons

  The rains poured. Flowers bloomed and beckoned the bees. The bull sought the cow, and the buck sought the doe. All was well in Anga. Rompada kept his promise and requested Rishyashringa to help Dashratha father sons. Rishyashringa readily agreed. Well versed in the secrets of nature, he decided to conduct a yagna.

  Rishyashringa declared Dashratha as the yajaman, initiator of the yagna, and prepared the altar, lit the fire and chanted potent hymns to invoke the devas. He instructed Dashratha to feed the devas who were being invoked with offerings of clarified butter. Each time Dashratha poured ghee into the fire, he was asked to say ‘svaha’, reminding the gods it was he who was feeding them. As the devas burped in satisfaction, Rishyashringa requested the gods to satisfy Dashratha’s hunger, in exchange. The invocation, the offerings and the requests continued, until the devas were so pleased that from the yagna emerged a potion, the havis. This when consumed by Dashratha’s wives would enable them to bear sons.

  Dashratha gave half the potion to Kaushalya, the wife he respected, and half to Kaikeyi, the wife he loved. Kaushalya gave a quarter of her potion to Sumitra, as she felt she should not be overlooked. Kaikeyi did the same. As a result, Kaushalya gave birth to Ram, Kaikeyi to Bharata, and Sumitra to the twins Lakshman and Shatrughna.

  Thus, Dashratha’s three wives could become mothers of four sons all because of his daughter, Shanta.

  The birth of Ram is celebrated as Ram Navami, the ninth day of the waxing moon in spring. On this day, images of Ram are placed on a swing and worshipped. He is the ideal son, the obedient son that mothers crave for.

  Based on astrological calculation, Ram’s date of birth has been identified as 10 January 5114 BCE, nearly seven thousand years ago.

  Village songs in the Gangetic plains say that Ram was born after sunset but there was no need for a lamp as Ram’s radiance filled the room. There are songs where Dashratha thanks Ram for saving him from the humiliation of being a king who cannot father an heir. We also have songs where a delighted Kaushalya lists the prayers and invocations that led to the birth of Ram.

  Valmiki’s Ramayana does not refer to Rishyashringa as a son-in-law. Later versions turn Rishyashringa into the son-in-law perhaps to dismiss allusions that Rishyashringa was brought in to perform niyoga, an ancient practice of getting a hermit to make childless women pregnant, which is elaborated in the Mahabharata.

  When the European Orientalists were first exposed to the Vedic scriptures and read about the yagna, they called it the ‘fire sacrifice’ based on their understanding of ritual. But in a sacrifice, the one who sacrifices loses something to appease a demanding deity. In a yagna, the beneficiary is the yajaman who initiates the yagna. He gives in order to receive. It is therefore best defined as an ‘exchange’. The fire is the medium through which the exchange takes place. Fire is the ‘middleman’, much like the priest.

  That Kaushalya and Kaikeyi share their portions with Sumitra becomes significant when compared to the three main queens of the Mahabharata – Gandhari, Kunti and Madri – who compete with each other as to who can have the most children. The Ramayana thus presents a happy household wh
ere the co-wives are not rivals, at least not initially.

  In the Ananda Ramayana, a portion of what is given to Kaushalya is taken by a crow and dropped into Anjana’s mouth. Thus is Hanuman born. In another retelling, a portion of what is given to Kaushalya is taken by a crow and dropped into Kaikesi’s mouth. Thus is Vibhishana born.

  For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as the birthplace of Ram. But the exact location of the birthplace of Ram, in Ayodhya, is the subject of great dispute and political turmoil in India. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more concrete, more structured, more homogeneous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the Eurocentric world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. The timeless thus becomes time-bound and the universal becomes particular. What used to once be a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts now have to intervene. Everyone wants to be right in a world where adjustment, allowance, accommodation and affection are seen as signs of weakness, even corruption.

  The Valmiki Ramayana describes the sacrifice of a horse as part of the yagna conducted by Rishyashringa. Descriptions of such practices are found in ancient Vedic ritual texts but are absent in later texts.

  In the Jain Ramayana s, Ram is called Padma.

  Sulabha and Janaka

  ‘Maybe you should consider calling Rishyashringa to Mithila’ was the advice Janaka received often enough. Since the arrival of Sita, his wife, Sunaina, had given birth to a daughter who was named Urmila, and Janaka’s brother, Kushadhvaja, had fathered two daughters, Mandavi and Shrutakirti. Four daughters to two brothers in the land of Videha, but no sons!