Valmiki Ramayana - Aranya Kanda

Rama bewails for Seetha as an ambivert, ambivalent romantic epical hero and asks Lakshmana to return to Ayodhya, as Rama is certain to perish without Seetha. He thinks his agony aloud, weighing pros and cons of his situation.

In not seeing Seetha that virtue-souled Rama's sagacity is marred by his anguish and he bewailed with his lotus-like eyes that are reddening like a pair of lotuses, raising is long arms.

Some mms use the word kaama in the compound shoka upahata cetanaH thus it becomes kaama upahata cetana and then it means 'his sagacity is marred by desire for Seetha...' and because of the adjacency of word dharmaatmaa 'righteous one...' 'a righteous desire is no sin to desire for... hence his desire for Seetha is righteous...' Then mahaabaahuu denotes that he is wailing raising his long arms, and kamala locana is indicative of redness of lotuses, thus his eyes are reddening by his wailing.

Even if Raghava is not able to see Seetha in his presence he started talking to her in a kind of inarticulate wailing, as wailing pampered his articulacy because his speech took shelter of wailing instinct, and as he is cowed down by Love-god, and thus he started to vent out his heart in this way.

Here the poet is starting the sixth phase among the ten phases called manmadha avasthaaH 'phases of pangs of love,' and this one is called a + rati 'non-indulgence, the ambivalence, the ambiversion...' of the romantic hero, in romantic epical poetry.

"Flowers fascinate you very much, my dear, hence you veil yourself with the full bloomed branches of Ashoka tree, but that alone is amplifying my anguish because you both have presently became tormentors.

"Maybe, both your thighs liken to the stalks of banana plants, thinking so, now you have lapped them in grovy banana plants, but I can distinguish which is which, thus now I caught sight of them, oh, lady, you are inapt at least to cover them from me. Oh, lady, you are facetiously glorying in the boscage of fully bloomed Karnikaara trees which is really wafting worry to me, rather than the fragrance of those flowers oh, glorious lady, enough, enough is this facetiousness of yours. I am aware of your humour, lady, and I know that you are jocose, but in a place like hermitage unmerited is this sort of raillery, even if it is good-natured. Hence, you come back, oh, wide-eyed one, your cottage is empty.

Be it a cottage or a palace, minus a housewife, it cannot be called a 'home' na g®ham g®ha iti ˜hu× g®hiõŸ g®ham ucyate | g®ham tu g®hiõŸ hŸnam araõyam sad®þamatam || Maha Bharata, 12-144-6; bh˜ry˜hŸnam g®hasthasya þ¨nyam eva g®ham bhavet | 'a house is a house when housewife is there, otherwise it amounts to a forest...' 'a house to the householder is a void, if the housewife is not there...'

"Oh, Lakshmana, very evidently demons have either gorged up Seetha, or perhaps abducted her, because she is not returning to me who am whiny indeed for her. Indeed these teary-eyed mobs of deer look as if to explain that nightwalkers have gluttonised my lady. Ha! My graceful lady, to where you have strayed now... Ha! Chastely and best complexioned lady, now the ambition of my queen mother Kaikeyi will be fulfilled, as I breath my last owing to your straying...

"I have come to forests with Seetha and have to go back to Ayodhya without Seetha. How, in all but name, can I step into an oblivion called my palace-chambers? People will denounce me as a vigourless and pitiless person, and my ineptitude will indeed be self-evident, for Seetha is led away from me by some tactical being... When the king of Mithila Janaka asks after the wellbeing of all the three of us after the completion of forest living, how do I have the face to stand him?

"On seeing me without Seetha the king of Videha will be distraught by the perishing of his daughter, and he defiantly goes under the preponderance of perplexity... Instead, I prefer not to go to the city Ayodhya that is ruled by Bharata, because it must be comforting to one and all under his rulership, but not to me as Seetha will not be with me... else if, that end of my life occurs now and if I were to go to heaven, even that heaven will be a void to me without her... I believe so...

"Hence, Lakshmana, you go back to that auspicious city Ayodhya forsaking me in forests, because I have no existence without Seetha, isn't it! On tightly hugging Bharata you shall tell him these words as I have said, 'Rama authorises you to reign the earth...' Oh, efficacious Lakshmana, on revering my mothers Kaika, Sumitra, and Kausalya justifiably you tell them my good bye, and you as the one who effectuates whatever is assigned to you, you have to effortfully protect my mother Kausalya by doing whatever she says. Oh, the subjugator of unfriendly, Lakshmana... you shall clearly inform in detail about this perish of Seetha, also that of mine, to our mothers.

Thus Raghava, the dejected, neared every corner of the forest in his search, and bewailed because that lady with best plaits, Seetha, is not found and missing from him. Even Lakshmana became whey-faced, frantic-hearted, highly overwrought, by the fear of uncertainty looming large on them.

Thus, this is the 62nd chapter in Aranya Kanda of Valmiki Ramayana, the First Epic poem of India.

Valmiki Ramayana - Aranya Kanda in Prose Sarga 62