Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Uttara · 50 of 50

50. The departure

Uttara (उत्तर)

A visitor comes to the court, a form of Time, or of Death, and the condition of the visit is that it not be interrupted. Lakṣmaṇa keeps the door. A sage's errand, or the need of someone who will not wait, forces the interruption. The condition falls on the doorkeeper. Lakṣmaṇa, who joined the exile without being asked, leaves the world at the river. The page says he leaves. It does not describe a death a reader could copy. Rāma's other half of the pair is gone, the watcher, the hut-builder, the man who was angry for him when he would not be angry.

The people will not stay behind. What kind of kingdom is left when the king goes, they say, and they walk with him to the Sarayū. Bharata and Śatrughna, the ministers, the city, a procession the reverse of the one that followed the chariot to the forest. Rāma enters the water. The poem says the one who was born returns. The brothers follow. The page says the entering and the return. It does not describe a method.

Uttara ends, and the received poem ends. The crane at the start and the river at the end are both witnesses. A hunter broke a pair, and a king broke a marriage, and a poet made the meter, and the sons sang it back. The shelf has walked all seven kāṇḍas. It has not sat the poem line by line. The first verse, the curse on the hunter, is the one line this chronicle recites. Everything else was the story that curse made room for: a dharma lived in public, and the persons it cost.

नेपालीमा

समयरूपी, वा मृत्युरूपी, एक आगन्तुक दरबारमा आए। भेटमा बीचमा कसैले नरोकोस् भन्ने सर्त थियो। लक्ष्मण ढोकामा थिए। बीचमा रोकियो। सर्त ढोकेमा पर्‍यो। नबोलाइकन वनवासमा सामेल भएका लक्ष्मणले नदीमा संसार छाडे। यो पृष्ठले छाडे भन्छ। पाठकले नक्कल गर्न सक्ने मृत्यु लेख्दैन। प्रजा पनि पछि बसेनन्। राजासँगै सरयूसम्म हिँडे। राम पानीमा पस्नुभयो। कविताले भन्छ, जन्मेको फर्कियो। भाइहरू पछि लागे। यो पृष्ठले प्रवेश र फिर्ती भन्छ। तरिका लेख्दैन। सातै काण्ड हिँडियो। श्लोक एकपछि अर्को गरी समावेश गरिएका छैनन्। यो वृत्तान्तले एउटा पङ्क्ति मात्र पढ्छ, शिकारीप्रतिको श्राप। बाँकी त्यही श्रापले ठाउँ दिएको कथा हो: सार्वजनिक रूपमा जिइएको धर्म, र त्यसले निलेका मान्छे।

Where it sits

The seven kāṇḍas are mapped on the Rāmāyaṇa hub. His birth is Rāma Navamī. The wedding day is Vivāha Pañcamī.