Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Ayodhyā · 11 of 50
11. The two boons
Ayodhyā (अयोध्या)
Daśaratha comes to fetch her to the feast of his happiness and finds her on the floor. He loves her in the way of an old king who still has one queen he cannot deny. He promises, before he hears the request, that he will do what she asks. The promise is the trap. She names the boons. Bharata is to be consecrated. Rāma is to go to the forest for fourteen years, in bark, as an ascetic, tomorrow.
Fourteen is this poem's number. The other epic will stake thirteen. The difference is worth remembering only because both poems treat the number as a law once it has been spoken. Daśaratha breaks. He begs. He offers her the kingdom without the exile, anything but the exile. She holds him to the shape of the boons. A word, in this house, has been the pride of the Ikṣvāku line. She uses the pride against him.
He cannot find a third way, because the poem is about a man whose third way would be to become someone else. The night passes with the king on the ground and the queen unmoving and the city still decorated. Morning is going to walk into a room the decorations do not know about.
नेपालीमा
दशरथ उनलाई आफ्नो खुसीको भोजमा लिन आए, र भुइँमा भेटे। उनले अनुरोध सुन्नुअघि नै जे माग्छिन् त्यही गर्ने वचन दिए। कैकेयीले वर भनिन्: भरतको अभिषेक, र रामको चौध वर्षको वनवास, भोलि नै। चौध यो कविताको अङ्क हो। अर्को महाकाव्यले तेह्र राख्छ। राजाले बिन्ती गरे। उनले वरको आकार छाडिनन्। इक्ष्वाकुको गर्व वचन हो। कैकेयीले त्यही गर्व दशरथमाथि चलाइन्।