Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Bāla · 4 of 50
4. Tāṭakā, the weapons, Ahalyā
Bāla (बाल)
The forest is not empty. Tāṭakā, a yakṣiṇī whose power has become a destruction of the place, comes against them. Rāma hesitates to kill a woman. Viśvāmitra tells him the hesitation is not mercy when the person is the ruin of the sacrifice and the country. Rāma kills her. The page says that she falls. It does not describe the killing. The lesson the sage intends is that dharma is not the refusal to act. The reader's discomfort is allowed to remain. The poem has begun, very early, the argument Uttara will make unbearable.
Then the weapons are given. The page names the gift and refuses the catalogue. What a prince receives from this sage is capacity, and the capacity is going to be used, soon, on a bow in a city and, much later, on a war. A list of missiles would pretend the gift was a technique. It is a trust.
At the hermitage of Gautama they come to Ahalyā. Indra had come to her in the sage's form. The sage cursed them both. Tellings differ on the body the curse used. In one she is stone. In another she is hidden, unseen, waiting in the ashram itself. This page does not choose, and it does not dwell on Indra's coming. Rāma's arrival ends the curse. She receives him and goes to her husband. A release, in this poem, is often just the right person arriving.
नेपालीमा
ताटका आएकी थिइन्। रामले स्त्रीलाई मार्न हिचकिचाउनुभयो। विश्वामित्रले भन्नुभयो, यज्ञ र देशको विनाश गर्ने व्यक्तिप्रति हिचकिचाहट दया होइन। ताटका ढलिन्। यो पृष्ठले ढलिन् भन्छ। मारिने तरिका लेख्दैन। अनि अस्त्र दिइए। यो पृष्ठले सूची बनाउँदैन। गौतमको आश्रममा अहिल्या थिइन्। इन्द्र ऋषिको रूपमा आएका थिए। ऋषिले दुवैलाई श्राप दिएका थिए। श्रापले उनी ढुङ्गा भएकी कि लुकी बसेकी, कथनहरू फरक छन्। यो पृष्ठले छान्दैन, र इन्द्रको आगमनमा अल्झिँदैन। रामको आगमनले श्राप सकियो।