Chapter 50 — The Sages at Ayodhya

Rama had come back to Ayodhya, received the waters of royal installation, and sat beneath the obligations of the crown. Yet the city had not forgotten the war. Names of the dead still passed between households; the friends who had crossed the sea for him had only lately returned to their own lands.

Then sages came to the king's residence.

They arrived from the east, south, west, and north, with pupils and attendants behind them: men weathered by roads, forest discipline, study, and ritual. Among them was Agastya, whom Rama had known during exile. The doorkeeper, seeing the assembly bright as fire in the outer court, went quickly inside.

“Agastya has come,” he told Rama, “with other sages.”

Rama rose at once. When the visitors entered, he greeted them with joined hands and the formal courtesies due to honored guests: water for the feet, the offering of welcome, seats prepared with grass and skins. A rishi was not merely a solitary holy man. Such a sage bore learning, disciplined practice, and public authority; the king received them as people before whom power itself must be answerable.

When they were seated, Rama asked after their welfare. The sages answered that they were well, and that they were glad to see him restored, with Sita, Lakshmana, his mothers, and his brothers.

They named the fallen defenders of Lanka. They spoke of Kumbhakarna's immense body brought down in battle; of Ravana, formidable even when confronted alone; of commanders whose weapons had made the field terrible. Their praise did not turn the fighting into a pageant. It remembered the danger that had crossed into the lives of many peoples.

But again and again their words returned to Indrajit.

Rama listened, then folded his hands. “Ravana and Kumbhakarna were men of great power,” he said. “So were many of the warriors you have named. Why, then, do you speak with such wonder of Ravana's son? How did he come by his strength and his boon? How did he defeat Indra? Tell me, if this is a history that may be told. I do not command it; I ask to hear.”

Agastya looked upon him with approval.

“Listen, Rama,” he said. “I will tell you of Ravana's family, his birth, and the exceptional protections granted to him. The answer begins before Lanka was his city, before Pushpaka carried him, before the war that has just ended.”

The court grew still. Outside, Ayodhya continued in the light of its restored day; within, the king and those around him turned toward a past that had not yet been spoken.