Chapter 20 — The King's Sandals

As Bharata's party approached the Ganga, Guha saw the banners, chariots, horses, and elephants, heard the far weight of the advancing force, and feared that Rama's younger brother had come with an army to harm him. Lakshmana, watching from the forest later, would feel the same alarm when the army's dust rose near Chitrakuta.

Bharata made his purpose clear to Guha. He had not come to seize the kingdom or to hunt Rama down. He had come to find his brother and return the kingdom to him. Guha accepted his words and helped the party cross the river. At the hermitage of Bharadvaja, Bharata asked the way to Chitrakuta and continued with the mothers, priests, counsellors, and people of Ayodhya.

When Lakshmana saw the force approaching, anger returned to him. He feared that Bharata meant to finish what Kaikeyi had begun. Rama would not accept that judgment. Bharata, he said, had never acted against them. A brother who came in person did not deserve to be condemned before he was heard.

Then Bharata came into view, without the confidence of a claimant. He saw Rama in bark cloth and matted hair, seated outside the leaf shelter, and the change from the brother he had last known in Ayodhya broke him. Shatrughna followed him in grief. Rama embraced Bharata and asked after their father. Bharata could not keep the answer back. Dasharatha was dead.

The news struck Rama down. When he recovered, the brothers went to the Mandakini and made the water offering for their father, pouring water with joined hands and placing the plain food of the forest before him. The act was not a replacement for their father or their lost city. It was what they could do together where they were.

After the rites, Bharata made his plea. He asked Rama to return to Ayodhya, to restore Kausalya, to relieve the people, and to rule the kingdom that had always been meant for him. He did not ask pardon as though the wrong were his own, but he placed himself below Rama and asked to serve him. The army, mothers, citizens, and sages who had crossed rivers to reach Chitrakuta now stood around the brothers while the question of the kingdom was argued in the open.

Rama answered with the promise that held him. Dasharatha had given Kaikeyi the two boons; Rama had accepted the forest for fourteen years; he could not now make his father's word false. Bharata answered that a dead father's mistaken or grievous command should not destroy the living, nor should a kingdom lose the ruler it needed because of it. Rama answered that he could not choose the part of the command that was easier to keep. Their voices did not turn either brother into an enemy; that was what made the dispute so hard to resolve.

Others spoke. The family, counsellors, and sages heard arguments about truth, filial obligation, kingship, and suffering. The meeting did not produce a simple judgment. Bharata's refusal to profit from the exile remained real; Rama's refusal to abandon the promise remained real as well.

At last Bharata asked for a sign of authority he could carry back. The padukas were Rama's sandals, made for royal dress and ornamented with gold. Bharata asked Rama to place his feet in them. Rama did so, stepped out of them, and gave them to his brother. Bharata received them with reverence, circled Rama, and lifted them onto his head.

The gesture did not make the sandals magical. It made the limit of Bharata's authority visible. The kingdom would be held for Rama; its welfare and security would be carried under the sign of Rama's feet, not as Bharata's possession. Bharata took leave of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, the mothers, and the gathered people, then carried the sandals back with Shatrughna, the priests, and the counsellors.

He first returned the mothers to Ayodhya. Then he went on to Nandigrama, outside the city. There he said openly that Rama had entrusted the kingdom to him as something set aside, and that he would preserve it until Rama came back. He exchanged royal ease for the bark garments and matted hair of an ascetic life, and lived with the army and ministers near him rather than taking the palace as his own.

The sandals were formally installed. Bharata presented the business of government to them and governed in their name, waiting for the end of the fourteen years. Rama remained in the forest; Bharata ruled without claiming the rule as his own. The arrangement gave Ayodhya continuity, but it did not make the brothers' moral conflict disappear. It held that conflict in trust, as Bharata held the kingdom, until Rama's return.