{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry154.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry154.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry154.htm","text":"The saint Vas'ishtha, best of all\n Whose words with moving wisdom fall,\n Bharat, Kaikey\u00ed's son, addressed,\n Whom burning *?fires of grief distressed:\n 'O Prince, whose fame is widely spread,\n Enough of grief: be comforted.\n The time is come: arise, and lay\n Upon the pyre the monarch's clay.'\n \n \n He heard the words Vas'ishtha spoke,\n And slumbering resolution woke.\n Then skilled in all the laws declare,\n He bade his friends the rites prepare\n They raised, the body from the oil,\n And placed it, dripping, on the soil;\n Then laid it on a bed, whereon\n Wrought gold and precious jewels shone.\n There, pallor o'er his features spread,\n The monarch, as in sleep, lay dead.\n Then Bharat sought his father's side,\n And lifted up his voice and cried:\n 'O King, and has thy heart designed\n To part and leave thy son behind?\n Make R\u00e1ma flee, who loves the right,\n And Lakshman of the arm of might?\n Whither, great Monarch, wilt thou go\n And leave this people in their woe.\n Mourning their hero, wild with grief,\n Of R\u00e1ma reft, their lion chief?\n Ah, who will guard the people well\n Who in Ayodhy\u00e1's city dwell,\n When thou, my sire, hast sought the sky,\n And R\u00e1ma has been forced to fly?\n In widowed woe, bereft of thee,\n The land no more is fair to *see*\n The city, to my aching sight,\n Is gloomy as a moonless night.'\n \n \n Thus, with o'erwhelming sorrow pained,\n Sad Bharat by the bed complained:\n And thus Vas'ishtha, holy sage,\n Spoke his deep anguish to assuage:\n 'O Lord of men, no longer stay;\n The last remaining duties pay:\n Haste, mighty-armed, as I advise,\n The funeral rites to solemnize.'\n \n \n And Bharat heard Vas'ishtha's rede\n With due attention and agreed.\n He summoned straight from every side\n Chaplain, and priest, and holy guide.\n The sacred fires he bade them bring\n Forth from the ohapel of the king,\n Wherein the priests in order due,\n And ministers, the offerings threw,\n Distraught in mind, with sob and tear,\n They laid the body on a bier,\n And servants, while their eyes brimmed o'er\n The monarch from the palace bore,\n Another band of mourners led\n The long procession of the dead:\n Rich garments in the way they cast,\n And gold and silver, as they passed,\n Then other hands the corse bedewed\n With fragrant juices that exude\n From sandal, cedar, aloe, pine,\n And every perfume rare and fine.\n Then priestly hands the mighty dead\n Upon the pyre deposited.\n The sacred fires they tended next,\n And muttered low each funeral text;\n And priestly singers who rehearse\n \n \n The S'aman \u00a01 sang their holy verse.\n Forth from the town in litters came,\n Or chariots, many a royal dame,\n And honoured so the funeral ground,\n With aged followers ringed around.\n With steps in inverse order bent, \u00a02\n The priests in sad procession went\n Around the monarch's burning pyre\n Who well had nursed each sacred fire:\n With Queen Kaus'aly\u00e1 and the rest,\n Their tender hearts with woe distressed,\n The voice of women, shrill and clear\n As screaming curlews, smote the ear,\n As from a thousand voices rose\n The shriek that tells of woman's woes.\n Then weeping, faint, with loud lament,\n Down Sarj\u00fa's shelving bank they went.\n \u00a0\u00a0 There standing on the river side\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With Bharat, priest, and peer,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Their lips the women purified\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With water fresh and clear.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Returning to the royal town,\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Their eyes with tear-drops filled,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Ten days on earth they laid them down,\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And wept till grief was stilled.\n \n \n \n \n185:1 Bharat does not intend these curses for any particular person: he merely wishes to prove his own innocence by invoking them on his own head if he had any share in banishing R\u00e1ma.","title":"Book II: Canto LXXVI.: The Funeral","type":"page"}