{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry116.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry116.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry116.htm","text":"Then when the people wroth and sad\n Saw S\u00edt\u00e1 in bark vesture clad,\n Though wedded, like some widowed thing,\n They cried out, 'Shame upon thee, King!'\n Grieved by their cry and angry look\n The lord of earth at once forsook\n All hope in life that still remained,\n In duty, self, and fame unstained.\n Ikshv\u00e1ku's son with burning sighs\n On Queen Kaikey\u00ed bent his eyes,\n And said: 'But S\u00edt\u00e1 must not flee\n In garments of a devotee.\n My holy guide has spoken truth:\n Unfit is she in tender youth,\n \n \n So gently nurtured, soft and fair,\n The hardships of the wood to share.\n \u00a0\u00a0 How has she sinned, devout and true,\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The noblest monarch's child,\n \u00a0\u00a0 That she should garb of bark indue\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And journey to the wild?\n \u00a0\u00a0 That she should spend her youthful days\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amid a hermit band,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Like some poor mendicant who strays\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sore troubled, through the land?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Ah, let the child of Janak throw\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Her dress of bark aside,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And let the royal lady go\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With royal wealth supplied.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Not such the pledge I gave before,\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unfit to linger here:\n \u00a0\u00a0 The oath, which I the sinner swore\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Is kept, and leaves her clear.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Won from her childlike love this too\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My instant death would be,\n \u00a0\u00a0 As blossoms on the old bamboo\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Destroy the parent tree. \u00a01\n If aught amiss by R\u00e1ma done\n Offend thee, O thou wicked one,\n What least transgiession canst thou find\n In her, thou worst of womankind?\n What shade of fault in her appears,\n Whose full soft eye is like the deer's?\n What canst thou blame in Janak's child,\n So gentle, modest, true, and mild?\n Is not one crime complete, that sent\n My R\u00e1ma forth to banishment!\n And wilt thou other sins commit.\n Thou wicked one, to double it?\n This is the pledge and oath I swore,\n What thou besoughtest, and no more,\n Of R\u00e1ma--for I heard thee, dame--\n When he for consecration came.\n Now with this limit not content,\n In hell should be thy punishment,\n Who fain the Maithil bride wouldst press\n To clothe her limbs with hermit dress.'\n \n \n Thus spake the father in his woe;\n And R\u00e1ma, still prepared to go,\n To him who sat with drooping head\n Spake in return these words and said:\n \n \n 'Just King, here stands my mother dear,\n Kaus'aly\u00e1, one whom all revere.\n Submissive, gentle, old is she,\n And keeps her lips from blame of thee,\n For her, kind lord, of me bereft\n A sea of whelming woe is left.\n O, show her in her new distress\n Still fonder love and tenderness.\n Well honoured by thine honoured hand\n Her grief for me let her withstand,\n Who wrapt in constant thought of me\n In me would live a devotee.\n \n \n \n \u00a0\u00a0 Peer of Mahendra, O, to her be kind,\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And treat I pray, my gentle mother so,\n \u00a0\u00a0 That, when I dwell afar, her life resigned,\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She may not, pass, to Yama's realm for woe.'\n \n \n \n \n \n140:1 It is said that the bamboo dies after flowering.","title":"Book II: Canto XXXVIII.: Care For Kaus'aly\u00e1","type":"page"}