Chapter 85 — Lava and Kusha

On the night Shatrughna entered the leaf dwelling, Sita gave birth to twin sons in Valmiki's hermitage.

At midnight the hermitage children went quickly to Valmiki. They brought him the joyful news and asked him to make the protection needed against harmful powers. The rishi received it with gladness.

He took a handful of kusa grass and a fragment called lava and made the protective rite for the newborn boys. The elder was to be cleansed with grass touched by sacred words; Valmiki gave him the name Kusha. The younger was to be cleansed with the lava fragment; Valmiki named him Lava. The women took the protection from the rishi's hands and performed it for the twins.

The naming did not yet reveal what either boy would become. They were newborns in a hermitage, held in their mother's refuge and guarded by the care of its people.

Late in the night Shatrughna heard the news from within his lodging. “Fortune has been kind,” he said, and rejoiced for the birth.

The rains had come in their proper season. At dawn Shatrughna completed his morning observances, bowed with joined hands to Valmiki, and continued westward. After seven nights on the road, he reached the hermitage of the rishis by the Yamuna, where Chyavana was among those waiting for him.