Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Uttara · 48 of 50
48. The earth takes her
Uttara (उत्तर)
Sītā lives at the hermitage. The twins, Lava and Kuśa, are born there, and Vālmīki is the elder of their childhood. She is not a queen in exile this time. She is a woman put down by the husband she crossed a forest for, raising his sons in the poet's house. The years pass. Rāma rules. The rule is told as prosperous and just. Inside it the kāṇḍa tells of Śambūka, a śūdra practicing austerity, whom Rāma kills, the poem giving as its reason that a brahmin's child had died of that breach of station. The shelf records the episode. It does not teach it as a rule, and it does not describe the killing. A perfect king's later book includes this, and a reader is not asked to call it perfect, or to confuse the justice with kindness.
A horse sacrifice brings the court to a feast of its own legitimacy. The twins come and sing. The king hears his life, including the parts a court would skip, in the meter that began with a crane. He knows them. He asks that Sītā come and prove herself once more, in public, so the whisper will die. She comes. She does not step into fire again. She calls the earth, her mother, the furrow she was born from. If she has been true, if her mind has never left him, let the ground take her. The ground opens. She is received into it. The page says the earth takes her. It does not describe a method of dying. He cannot follow.
The second test is the one the fire did not buy off. A public that was given a miracle asked for another, and the king agreed to ask, and the person who answered was the earth, which does not return what it takes. Rāma is left with the sons and the poem and a consecration that now has nobody standing beside it.
नेपालीमा
सीता आश्रममा बसिन्। लव र कुश जन्मे। वाल्मीकि उनीहरूको बाल्यकालका अभिभावकतुल्य थिए। वर्ष बिते। राज्य समृद्ध र न्यायी भनिन्छ। त्यसैभित्र शम्बूक, तपस्या गर्ने शूद्र, रामले मार्नुभयो; कविताले कारण ब्राह्मण बालकको मृत्यु बताउँछ। यो तहले प्रसंग लेख्छ। नियम बनाउँदैन। मारिने तरिका लेख्दैन। अश्वमेधमा जुम्ल्याहाले गाए। राजाले आफ्नो जीवन सुन्नुभयो, क्रौञ्चबाट सुरु भएको छन्दमा। उहाँले सीतालाई फेरि सार्वजनिक प्रमाण माग्नुभयो। उनले आगोमा टेकिनन्। पृथ्वीलाई, आफ्नी आमालाई, बोलाइन्। म सत्य भए भूमिले मलाई लिओस् भनिन्। भूमि खुल्यो। उनलाई लियो। यो पृष्ठले पृथ्वीले लिइन् भन्छ। मर्ने तरिका लेख्दैन। राम पछ्याउन सक्नुभएन। आगोले किनेको परीक्षा पर्याप्त भएन।