Chapter 79 — Across the Ganga

After he had dismissed his companions, Rama made his decision in silence. Then he called for Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna.

Lakshmana came first, hurrying from his house in a chariot. Bharata came on foot. Shatrughna, hearing that his elder brother wished to see him, bowed his head to the ground before he went. When the three entered, dressed in white and standing with folded hands, they saw a change in Rama that stopped them. His face had lost its radiance; his eyes were filled with tears.

He embraced them and seated them near him.

“You are all that I have,” he said. “You are my life. With your help I govern this kingdom. You understand counsel and the work of rule. Hear now what must be considered for my sake.”

His mouth was dry when he spoke of the report from the city and countryside. The public reproach directed at him because of Sita, he said, had entered his heart like a wound. Yet he did not say that he believed the accusation. Before his brothers he named her innocent. Lakshmana himself, he reminded them, had seen Agni declare her free of blame before the gods; Vayu had spoken from the sky, and sun and moon had testified in that gathered presence. Rama said that his own inward knowledge also knew Sita to be pure.

Still, he returned to the speech of the people and to the fear of dishonor. A person whose disgrace is sung in the world, he said, falls while that reproach endures; fame is honored, ill fame condemned. He spoke as though the demand of reputation could stand against the truth he had just affirmed. Nothing in the room made that contradiction easier.

“For fear of this reproach,” Rama said, “I could give up my life. I could give up even you. How much more—” He broke off, then asked them to look upon him as one fallen into an ocean of grief.

At dawn, he ordered Lakshmana to take a chariot driven by Sumantra. Lakshmana was to take Sita beyond the settled lands, across the Ganga, to the hermitage of Valmiki, a rishi and old friend of Dasharatha, on the bank of the river. There Lakshmana was to leave her in a lonely place and return at once.

Sita was carrying his children. Rama gave the order anyway.

“Do not answer me about Sita,” Rama said. “Do not try to turn me from this. You are bound to me by your lives and by your arms. If you honor my command, take her away today.”

He added the bitter instrument of the order: Sita had once said that she wished to see the great hermitages beside the Ganga. That wish, he said, was to be fulfilled.

Rama went inside with his eyes obscured by tears, his brothers following him.

At daybreak Lakshmana, sick with grief, told Sumantra to harness the finest chariot and lay a comfortable seat in it for Sita. He went to her and gave only the message that could carry her toward a purpose he could not speak.

“By the king's command,” he said, “I am to take you swiftly to the hermitages on the Ganga.”

Sita's joy was immediate. She gathered fine garments, varied jewels, and gifts for the wives of the rishis. “I will give these to them,” she said. Lakshmana helped her into the chariot, remembering Rama's command, and the horses carried them out from the palace.

As they travelled, Sita looked toward Lakshmana.

“Today I see many ill signs,” she said. “My eye trembles. My body shudders. My heart will not settle, and the earth itself seems empty to me. May all be well with your brother and his brothers, with all my mothers-in-law, with the city, the countryside, and every living being.”

With folded hands she prayed to the gods. Lakshmana bowed to her and said only that all would be well, forcing cheer into a voice that did not contain it.

They spent the night near an ashram on the Gomati. In the morning they went on toward the Ganga, also called the Bhagirathi. At the river, Lakshmana saw the water and began to weep aloud. Sita, who had waited so long for this visit, saw his distress.

“Why do you grieve when we have reached the river I wished to see?” she asked. “You are always at Rama's feet. Has he been sorrowful without you for these two nights? He is dearer to me than life, Lakshmana, yet I do not grieve as you do. Do not be foolish. Take me across. Show me the ascetics. I will honor them, give them these garments and riches, and after one night we will return to the city.”

Lakshmana wiped his eyes and brought a broad boat. Sumantra remained behind with the chariot. Lakshmana placed Sita in the boat first and crossed with her to the far bank.

There he stood before her with joined hands, his voice broken.

“A great thorn has been lodged in my heart,” he said. “For the sake of the world's speech, my wise brother has compelled me to do what deserves blame. Better death for me than this command. Do not be angry with me.”

Sita stared at him. “I do not understand. Tell me plainly. You are not well, and I fear there is no good news of the king. If Rama has forbidden you to tell me your grief, I command you: tell it to me now.”

Lakshmana lowered his face. Rama had heard a terrible public accusation, he said, and because of it had left Sita, though she was without fault. Lakshmana was to abandon her at the edges of the hermitages. He begged her not to take his words otherwise. Valmiki's sacred retreat stood nearby, he told her; she could live there, devoted to the practices of a faithful wife, with Rama held in her heart.

The blow brought Sita to the ground. After a time, she looked through tears at Lakshmana.

“Surely this body of mine was made for sorrow,” she said. “What wrong did I do in another life? I have lived without blame, yet the king abandons me. I once lived in the forest beside Rama, following his hardship. How will I now live alone in an ashram? What will I say to the rishis? What injury did I do Rama? For what cause has he left me?”

She looked toward the river. “I would give up my life in the Ganga today. But then my husband's royal line would be mocked.”

Then she gathered herself enough to send words back with Lakshmana. He was to bow to all the queens on her behalf and ask after their welfare. To Rama she sent a harder message than comfort: he was to treat his brothers as he treated himself and to act rightly toward the people of city and countryside. That, she said, was the highest dharma and the finest fame for a king. She did not grieve for her own body, she said, as she grieved that the public slander should have come to this.

Lakshmana could not speak. He bowed until his head met the earth. Then, crying, he circled Sita in farewell and returned to the boat. From the northern bank he climbed into the chariot, bearing the weight of what he had done.

Again and again he turned to look back. On the far shore Sita watched the chariot recede, alone and shaken by grief. When it had become distant, she could no longer see Lakshmana. The river kept moving between them, and her cry rose through the empty forest.