Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Bāla · 3 of 50
3. Viśvāmitra comes
Bāla (बाल)
The peace lasts long enough for the princes to be boys. Then Viśvāmitra comes to the court and asks for Rāma. He has a sacrifice to complete, and rākṣasas defile it, and he wants the boy, not an army. Daśaratha refuses. He is old, and Rāma is young, and the love of a father who waited years for a son is stronger, for a moment, than a sage's request.
Vasiṣṭha, the family priest, tells the king to give the boy. Viśvāmitra is not asking for something he cannot protect. Daśaratha yields. Rāma goes, and Lakṣmaṇa goes with him, because that is already the shape of the pair. The leaving is the poem's first statement that a prince's life is not his father's to keep.
On the road the sage begins to teach. The teaching, in this kāṇḍa, is not the non-dual discourse a later book will put in Vasiṣṭha's mouth. It is the knowledge a prince needs before he meets what the forest actually contains. The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha is that later book. It is not this journey.
नेपालीमा
विश्वामित्रले यज्ञका लागि राम माग्नुभयो। वर्षौं पर्खेर पाएको छोराको मायाले दशरथले अस्वीकार गरे। वसिष्ठले दिन भन्नुभयो। राम लक्ष्मणसँग जानुभयो। कविताको पहिलो भनाइ: राजकुमारको जीवन बाबुले थामेर राख्ने होइन। बाटोमा ऋषिले सिकाउनुभयो। त्यो सिकाइ राजकुमारलाई वनमा हुने कुराको सामना गर्नुअघि चाहिने ज्ञान हो, पछिल्लो योगवासिष्ठको अद्वैत भाषण होइन।