First Among the Astute

When Rāvaṇa had gone, raging and defeated, he left orders with the demon guards, the rākshasīs who ringed Sītā, to redouble their torments, to break her by cruelty since he could not win her by temptation, to threaten and menace her without cease until her spirit gave way. And the demon-women fell to their work, crowding around the captive queen, threatening her with death, with devouring, with every horror, trying by sheer weight of menace to terrify her into yielding.

And Sītā, worn and alone, ringed by these monstrous shapes shrieking their threats, sank toward the depths of despair, and even her great strength was sorely tried, for there is a limit to what any soul can bear, and the relentless cruelty of her keepers pressed her hard.

But among the demon-women who guarded her, there was one who was different, and her name was Trijaṭā, and she was old, and wise, and though a rākshasī by birth she had a righteous heart, and she had come, watching Sītā’s suffering and steadfastness, to pity and even to reverence the captive queen.

And in the very hour when the other demon-women pressed their cruelty hardest, Trijaṭā intervened, and she did it in a way that turned the whole mood of the grove, for she had had a dream, a powerful and prophetic dream, and she now recounted it to the others, and its telling changed everything.

Stop your cruelty, Trijaṭā told the demon-women, and hear the dream I have had, for it is a warning to us all. And she told them her dream, and it was full of omens, and every omen pointed one way: to the triumph of Rāma and the doom of Lankā. She had seen, in her dream, Rāma, radiant, mounted upon a great white celestial elephant, or by other tellings a heavenly chariot, clad in shining white, coming in glory; and she had seen Sītā, reunited with him, seated at his side, honoured, restored, delivered.

And she had seen, against these bright images, the omens of ruin for Lankā: she had seen Rāvaṇa fallen, clad in red, smeared with oil, dragged southward toward the region of death, tumbling into a pit of filth and darkness; she had seen the demons in disarray and terror; she had seen the golden city of Lankā given over to flames, burning, consumed, its glory turned to ash. Every image of the dream spoke the same message: Rāma triumphant, Sītā delivered, Rāvaṇa destroyed, Lankā burned.

Do not torment her, Trijaṭā warned the other demon-women, for this dream is true, and it tells us plainly what is coming. This captive whom you threaten is destined for deliverance and for glory; her husband is coming, and he will triumph, and he will destroy all of us who have wronged her. If you are wise, you will not add to her sufferings now, but will rather seek her goodwill, that she may protect you when her hour of triumph comes, as it surely will.

The doom of Lankā is written; I have seen it; and the part of wisdom is to fear it, and to treat this queen not with cruelty but with the respect due to one whose deliverance is certain and whose husband will soon be our destroyer.

And the dream, and Trijaṭā’s warning, worked a change upon the demon- women, for even the wicked fear omens, and even the cruel grow cautious when they are shown their coming ruin. The threatening subsided; the cruelty eased; the demon-women, shaken by the dream and its clear prophecy of Lankā’s fall, drew back from their torment of Sītā, and the grove grew quieter, and Sītā was granted, through Trijaṭā’s intervention, a respite from the worst of her keepers’ menace.

There is a purpose in this episode beyond the mere easing of Sītā’s suffering, and the tellers dwell on it, for Trijaṭā’s dream serves the story in several ways at once. It brings comfort to Sītā in her darkest hour, for she too heard the dream, and its prophecy of Rāma’s coming and her own deliverance was balm to her despairing heart, a promise, spoken even by one of the enemy, that her faith was not in vain and her rescue was truly coming.

It shows us that even among the demons, even in the very household of Rāvaṇa, there were those whose hearts could perceive the truth and incline toward the right, that wickedness was not total even in Lankā, that a righteous soul could exist even among the rākshasas and could pity the innocent and foresee the justice that was coming.

And it sounds, for us who read, a note of assurance amid the darkness, a promise that the long night of Sītā’s captivity and the whole tragedy of the abduction would end in deliverance and in justice, that Rāma would come and Rāvaṇa would fall and Sītā would be restored, exactly as the dream foretold.

Let us mark, too, the particular kind of wisdom that Trijaṭā represents, for the chapter’s name honours it: the wisdom that reads the signs, that perceives which way the deeper currents of justice are running, that knows how to align itself with the truth even against the will of its own kind.

Trijaṭā was a rākshasī, born among the enemies of Rāma, bound to the household of the demon king; and yet she saw the truth that her king in his pride could not see, that Rāma would triumph and Lankā would fall, and she had the wisdom and the courage to say so, and to counsel mercy, and to incline toward the right even at the risk of her own kind’s displeasure.

It is a rare and valuable wisdom, this ability to see past the loyalties of birth and faction to the deeper truth of where justice lies, and to act on it; and Trijaṭā, alone among the demon-women, had it, and used it, and so became, in the midst of the enemy’s household, an unexpected friend to the captive queen and an unexpected servant of the truth.

She is one more of the story’s quiet helpers, the righteous soul in an unexpected place, and her dream and her mercy are one more link in the long chain of graces by which Sītā was sustained and Rāma’s cause advanced.

So the grove grew quiet, and Sītā, comforted a little by the dream of her coming deliverance, sat on in her captivity with a spark of new hope kindled in her despair. And now, at last, with the demon-women subdued and the grove grown still, the moment had come for which Hanumān, hidden in the tree above, had been waiting: the moment to make himself known to Sītā, gently, carefully, and to give her the sign that would prove him no demon’s trick but the true and longed-for messenger of Rāma.