Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Uttara · 47 of 50
47. The whispers
Uttara (उत्तर)
Uttara is later in voice than the six, and the shelf says so every time it opens the book. It keeps the book, because the received poem keeps it. Before the whispers, the kāṇḍa tells Rāvaṇa's earlier life, the boon, the wars, the shape of the rākṣasa house.
Then the whispers. Bhadra, a companion of the king, reports what the citizens say. They praise the victory, and they doubt a queen who has lived in another man's house. (The washerman is a later telling.) Rāma hears that the people doubt. The fire in Laṅkā was supposed to have ended the doubt. He decides the people's speech weighs more than the proof. Lakṣmaṇa is ordered to take Sītā to the forest and leave her. She is pregnant. She is left near Vālmīki's hermitage, not knowing, at first, that the leaving is the sentence.
The poem of the ideal king becomes, in this book, the poem of an ideal that eats the person it was written for. The shelf does not praise the choice. It does not soften it into a public duty that excuses the man. Bharata's regency was a dharma that cost him comfort. This is a dharma that costs someone else her place, and the poem lets the difference stand.
नेपालीमा
उत्तरकाण्ड अघिल्ला छवटाभन्दा पछिको स्वर हो। यो तहले त्यो भन्छ, र पुस्तक राख्छ। कानेखुसीअघि यसले रावणको पुरानो जीवन पनि सुनाउँछ। अनि कानेखुसी आउँछ। रामका सहचर भद्रले प्रजाको कुरा सुनाए। प्रजाले जितको प्रशंसा गरे, तर अर्काको घरमा बसेकी रानीमाथि शङ्का गरे। (धोबीको कथा पछिल्लो कथन हो।) लङ्काको आगोले शङ्का मेटेको ठानिएको थियो। रामले प्रजाको वाक्यलाई प्रमाणभन्दा भारी ठान्नुभयो। लक्ष्मणले गर्भवती सीतालाई वाल्मीकिको आश्रमनजिक छाडे, उनलाई पहिले छाड्नु नै सजाय हो भन्ने थाहा थिएन। आदर्श राजाको कविता यहाँ आफ्नै पात्रलाई निल्ने आदर्शको कविता बन्छ। यो तहले छनोटको प्रशंसा गर्दैन।