Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Araṇya · 26 of 50
26. Kabandha and Śabarī
Araṇya (अरण्य)
The search stumbles before it becomes a search. Kabandha is a torso, a cursed being with his face in his stomach, and he seizes them. They free him by the act the curse itself required, and he remembers he was a gandharva, and he gives them the only useful sentence they have had. Go to Sugrīva, the monkey king in exile, on Ṛṣyamūka. He has a quarrel with a brother and a need of a friend. You are a man who has lost a wife. The match is obvious and it is not yet an alliance. The page says Kabandha is released. It does not describe the fight.
On the way they come to Śabarī, an ascetic woman who has been waiting because her teachers told her Rāma would come. She offers him fruits she has gathered. (The tasted berries are a later devotional telling.) He receives her. She has seen him, which was the condition of her waiting, and she gives up her body. The page says that she leaves it. It does not describe a method. A woman outside the courtly order is given a full reception. The poem is wider, here, than the palace it left.
They turn toward the mountain and the monkeys. The Araṇya-kāṇḍa ends as a direction, not as a victory. The forest has taken Sītā and given, in exchange, two names: Rāvaṇa, and Sugrīva.
नेपालीमा
कबन्धले उनीहरूलाई समात्यो। श्रापले भनेको कामले ऊ मुक्त भयो। उसले ऋष्यमूकका सुग्रीवको नाम दियो। यो पृष्ठले ऊ मुक्त भयो भन्छ। लडाइँ लेख्दैन। बाटोमा पर्खिरहेकी शबरी भेटिइन्। उनले बटुलेका फल दिइन्। (चाखेर दिएको बयर पछिल्लो भक्ति-कथन हो।) रामले ग्रहण गर्नुभयो। उनले शरीर त्यागिन्। यो पृष्ठले त्यागिन् भन्छ। तरिका लेख्दैन। अरण्यकाण्ड दिशामा सकिन्छ। सीता लगिएकी छन्। नाम दुईवटा छन्, रावण र सुग्रीव।