Chapter 9 — Four Weddings
At daybreak Dasharatha set out from Ayodhya. Priests went before him, and his ministers, wealth officers, servants, and fourfold royal force followed. The journey was made quickly, for Janaka's messengers had come in haste. After four days on the road, Dasharatha reached Mithila.
Janaka came out to receive him. The two kings met with the gladness of fathers who had heard good news of their sons, and with the care of rulers whose houses were about to be joined. Janaka said that the sacrifice was nearly at its end. When it was complete, the marriage should be performed in the presence of the sages and the two royal lines.
“The receiver does not command the giver,” Dasharatha replied. “Tell us what is right, and we will do it.”
The next morning Janaka sent for his younger brother, Kushadhvaja, king of Sankashya. While they waited, Vashishta spoke the long lineage of Dasharatha's house, beginning with Manu and Ikshvaku and proceeding through kings whose names carried the memory of Ayodhya's line. Janaka answered with the lineage of the Videhas, descending from Nimi through the first king called Janaka down to himself and his brother.
These recitations were not idle displays. In a royal marriage, households made their descent, obligations, and public standing known before they made a new bond.
Janaka then told why Kushadhvaja ruled where he did. A king named Sudhanvan had demanded both the great bow and Sita. When Janaka would not give them, there had been war. Janaka killed Sudhanvan in battle and installed his younger brother in Sankashya. Now Kushadhvaja had come at his brother's summons.
Janaka turned to the sages. “I give Sita to Rama.” Then he named Urmila, Sita's sister and Janaka's other daughter. “And I give Urmila to Lakshmana.”
Vishvamitra, with Vashishta beside him, spoke again. Kushadhvaja had two daughters. Would he give them also, they asked, to Bharata and Shatrughna, the other sons of Dasharatha?
Janaka accepted the proposal. “Let the two daughters of Kushadhvaja be wives to Bharata and Shatrughna. On one day, let four princes take the hands of four princesses.”
Thus the marriages were fixed: Sita with Rama, Urmila with Lakshmana, Mandavi with Bharata, and Shrutakirti with Shatrughna. Each was given within the particular house from which she came; each stood at the center of her own marriage rite.
Before the ceremony Dasharatha made the observances required of him. He honored his ancestors and gave cows in great number to learned recipients. A gift of cows, godana, was a serious ritual gift, part of the preparations by which a father marked the change in his sons' lives.
On the appointed day, the sacrificial ground had become a place of marriage. The ritual fire burned beside the altar, bright against flowers, vessels, and the gathered colors of royal dress. The princes came with their brothers and the sages, adorned for the occasion but not separated from the discipline that had brought them to Mithila.
Vashishta approached Janaka and said that Dasharatha waited with his sons for the giver of the brides. Janaka answered that his daughters were ready beside the altar, bright as flames of the fire. There was no reason to delay.
Dasharatha brought the princes forward.
Janaka spoke first to Rama. “This is Sita, my daughter. She will be your companion in dharma: not simply a companion of your household, but one joined to the shared order of duty by which a life is judged. Receive her. Take her hand in yours.”
Then he called Lakshmana to receive Urmila. Urmila, like Sita, is a daughter of Janaka; she has no separate speech here, but she is not an anonymous figure in the rite. He addressed Bharata and placed Mandavi's hand in his. He spoke to Shatrughna and gave him Shrutakirti's hand.
The formal taking of hands joined each couple before the witnesses assembled there. Then the four brothers and the four brides circled the sacred fire, the altar, Janaka, and the sages. The fire was not a decoration for their wedding; it stood within the rite as witness to acts performed and obligations entered.
Flowers fell from above, and celestial drums sounded. Apsaras, celestial women often associated with dance, danced; gandharvas, celestial musicians, sang. But the human scene remained clear beneath that praise: two families had made one alliance; four young women and four young men had crossed together into marriage.
After they had circled the fire three times, the rites were complete. The celestial praise gave the ceremony its epic radiance; the quieter human fact remained eight young people stepping out of the order of their birth houses and into marriages whose consequences none of them yet knew. The couples withdrew to their quarters, and the elders watched them go.