Chapter 110 — The Empty World

When Sita had entered the Earth, the sacrifice came to its end. Rama could not see her, and the world seemed empty to him.

The assembly had been immense: kings, vanaras, rakshasas, sages, and people who had come to hear a poem and had witnessed its living wound. Now Rama dismissed them. He sent away the rulers, the vanaras and bears, the rakshasas, and the gathered brahmins, giving generously as they departed. Then, with Sita held in his heart, he went back to Ayodhya.

The return did not reverse what had happened. He did not take another wife.

At the great sacrifices that followed, when a wife was required in the rite, an image of Janaki—another name for Sita, as daughter of King Janaka—made of gold stood in that place. The image was ritual material. It was not Sita returned to the palace, nor a word from her, nor a reconciliation made visible in metal. The woman who had called upon Earth was absent; the court and its sacrifices continued around that absence.

Rama performed horse sacrifices over ten thousand years, and other costly royal rites rich in gifts. The rites belonged to a world in which kingship, generosity, and cosmic order were bound together. At every rite, the golden Sita marked the place that could not simply be filled.

Years passed in the manner of epic time. Rama ruled with care for dharma. The vanaras, bears, and rakshasas remained under his protection and command; other kings continued to honor him day by day. Rain came in season. The directions were clear. City and countryside were full of people who prospered. No one died before their time; disease did not afflict living beings; wrongdoing was not found while Rama ruled.

This was the order that followed Sita's departure: a realm made peaceful and abundant, and a king who had not ceased the obligations of rule. It does not say that abundance made the earlier demand harmless. It does not give Sita another place in the palace. The kingdom flourished; the absence remained.

After a long time Kausalya, Rama's mother, died, surrounded by children and grandchildren. Sumitra and Kaikeyi followed her after doing many works of dharma, and the three queens were said to join Dasharatha in heaven.

Rama made great gifts at their proper times, without distinction among the mothers, to brahmins and ascetics. He carried out ancestral rites and difficult sacrifices, honoring forebears and gods.

The king continued to keep the world entrusted to him. But there was what no well-governed kingdom can restore: Sita had gone where no procession from Ayodhya could follow.