Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana Read online

  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