Sītā and Hanumān

When the first joy of the meeting had passed, there were things to be settled between them, and the conversation that followed reveals Sītā’s greatness once more, and turns upon a question of duty and dignity that she answers with a wisdom worthy of Rāma himself.

For Hanumān, seeing her suffering, and being who he was, mighty beyond measure, able to grow to a colossal size and to leap the ocean, made her an offer that must have been tempting past words. Why wait, he said in effect, for the army and the war and all the long labour of the rescue? Why should you endure this captivity a day longer than you must?

I am strong enough; I can grow great; climb upon my back, and I will carry you across the ocean this very hour, back to Rāma, and end your captivity now, tonight, and spare you all further suffering and spare Rāma all further grief. Let me take you home. I have the strength; the thing can be done; you need not remain in this terrible place another day.

It was a real offer, and Hanumān had the power to make it good, and it would have ended Sītā’s suffering at once. And Sītā considered it, and she declined it, and her reasons are the heart of this chapter, and they show the depth of her understanding of dharma and of her own dignity.

She declined it, first, on a point of dignity and propriety that meant much to her. To be carried away upon the back of another male, she said, to let another man’s body bear her, even in rescue, even in so pure a cause, would be a thing that touched her honour and her vows as Rāma’s wife. She was devoted to Rāma alone; her person was Rāma’s; and to be borne away clinging to the body of another, however faithful a servant he was, was a familiarity that her fidelity would not easily permit.

It was a fine and perhaps a severe scruple, but it was hers, and it flowed from the absolute purity of her devotion, and she held to it.

But she declined it, second, for a deeper reason, a reason of dharma that went beyond her own person to the honour of Rāma and of his whole line, and this is the argument the tellers most admire. If I were to escape in secret, she said, carried away by stealth in the night, then Rāma would be robbed of something that is his by right: the right to come himself, to defeat the demon who wronged him, to avenge the insult to his wife and his honour in open battle, and to take me back with his own hand, openly, in triumph.

For consider what my abduction was: it was an insult, a challenge, a wrong done to Rāma and to the whole house of the Raghus, and such a wrong demands to be answered, not evaded. If I am smuggled out by a servant’s stealth, the wrong is not answered; it is merely undone; and Rāvaṇa is left unpunished, and the insult unavenged, and the honour of Rāma’s line unrestored.

But if Rāma comes himself, and crosses the ocean, and meets Rāvaṇa in battle, and defeats him, and takes me back by the strength of his own arm, then the wrong is answered as a wrong must be answered, the insult is avenged, the demon is punished, and the glory of the Raghuvamsha, stained by my abduction, is washed clean and made bright again. It is not enough that I be rescued; it matters how I am rescued; and the only rescue that satisfies dharma and restores honour is the open victory of Rāma over Rāvaṇa in battle.

Therefore I will not be carried away by stealth. I will wait. Let Rāma come, and conquer, and take me back with honour, so that the glory of his house remains untarnished.

Let us weigh what Sītā chose here, for it was a hard choice and a great one. She chose to remain in captivity, to endure more suffering, to prolong her own ordeal and Rāma’s grief, rather than accept an escape that would have ended her suffering at once but would have compromised the deeper demands of dharma and honour.

She had every reason, every excuse, to accept Hanumān’s offer; no one could have blamed her for grasping at deliverance after all she had endured; and she refused it, deliberately, out of a clear understanding that some things matter more than the ending of suffering, that honour and dharma and the proper answering of a wrong are worth even the price of continued captivity.

It is the same quality we have seen in Rāma, the willingness to choose the harder right over the easier relief, the refusal to evade the full demands of duty even when evasion is offered and would be forgiven; and Sītā shows it here as purely as Rāma ever showed it, and the tellers set the two of them side by side in this, husband and wife matched in their fidelity to the highest law even at the cost of their own suffering.

There is a further wisdom in her choice, too, a care for Rāma’s own greatness. For Sītā understood that to deny Rāma the chance to rescue her himself would be, in a way, to diminish him, to rob him of his rightful triumph, to treat him as one who needed his wife smuggled out by a servant because he could not win her back himself.

Her refusal was, at its heart, an act of faith in Rāma and of care for his honour: a declaration that she trusted him to come, that she wanted him to have the victory that was his due, that she would rather suffer longer and be rescued by his open triumph than be delivered sooner in a way that lessened him. It was love that refused the easy escape, love that chose to wait for the beloved’s proper victory rather than accept a lesser deliverance, and it is one of the most moving things in all Sītā’s moving story.

So it was settled: Sītā would wait; Rāma would come; the rescue would be by open battle and not by stealth. And to seal the arrangement and to send her own token back to Rāma, as he had sent his ring to her, Sītā gave Hanumān a jewel of her own, the Chūḍāmaṇi, the crest-jewel she had worn in her hair, a precious ornament that Rāma would know, that would prove to him beyond doubt that Hanumān had truly found her and spoken with her, that she lived and kept faith and waited.

As Rāma’s ring had proved Hanumān true to Sītā, so Sītā’s crest-jewel would prove Hanumān’s report true to Rāma, and would carry to her husband, across the ocean, the touch of her own hand and the token of her unbroken love. Hanumān received the jewel reverently, and treasured it, for it was the sign of his errand’s success and the proof he would carry home.

And with the jewel given and the counsel spoken and the arrangement sealed, Hanumān’s errand of finding was complete. He had crossed the ocean, entered the fortress, found the captive, comforted her, proved himself true, received her counsel and her token. There remained only to return, to carry back across the sea the news that would end Rāma’s grief and set the army in motion.

But Hanumān, before he left, resolved to do one thing more, a thing not strictly required of a messenger, but that his own bold heart prompted: he would test the strength of Lankā, would give the demons a taste of what was coming, would strike a blow that would announce to Rāvaṇa that his golden city was no longer safe. And so, his gentle errand of comfort done, Hanumān prepared to turn from messenger into warrior, and to set the enemy’s garden, and soon the enemy’s city, ablaze.