The Good Bird Jaṭāyu

The golden stag came to Panchavaṭī in the bright of day, and it was as lovely as Mārīcha’s sorcery could make it, and Sītā saw it, and was enchanted.

It moved at the edge of the grove, grazing, its golden hide catching the sunlight and throwing it back in a shimmer, its jewelled spots gleaming, its whole form so impossibly beautiful that it seemed less an animal than a wonder out of a dream. Sītā, gathering flowers near the cottage, looked up and saw it and was caught, as anyone might be caught, by the sheer dazzling loveliness of the thing. She had never seen its like; no one had; and a longing rose in her to have it, to keep it, to possess so beautiful a creature.

She called to Rāma and Lakshmaṇa to come and see, and she begged Rāma to catch it for her, to take it alive if he could so that she might keep it, or if not, at least to bring her its marvellous golden hide.

Now Lakshmaṇa, ever watchful, ever suspicious, distrusted the creature at once. This is no natural animal, he warned. A golden deer, jewelled, shining? There is no such beast in all the world. It is some trick, some illusion, some demon’s snare; I have never liked the sorceries of this forest, and this reeks of them. Do not chase it, brother. It is a trap. And Rāma himself felt the same unease, and said as much; he too sensed something unnatural in the creature, something that did not belong to the ordinary order of the world.

But Sītā’s longing was strong, and here the story places its finger, gently and without harshness, on the small human weakness that opens the door to catastrophe. Sītā was not foolish, and she was not weak; she was the wisest and strongest of women, as the whole story has shown. But she wanted the beautiful thing, wanted it with the simple immediate longing that beauty kindles in us, and her wanting overrode the caution that both her husband and her brother-in-law urged upon her. She pressed Rāma. She would not be dissuaded.

And Rāma, who loved her, and who could refuse her little, and who reasoned that even if the creature were a demon he was more than able to deal with it, at last gave way to her wish. He would go and catch or kill the golden stag. But he was uneasy still, and he gave Lakshmaṇa a strict charge before he went: stay here, he said, guard Sītā, do not leave her side for any reason, whatever happens. And with that he took up his bow and went after the deer.

The stag led him a long chase. That was Mārīcha’s art; the creature did not simply flee but lured, staying always just ahead, drawing Rāma deeper and deeper into the forest, farther and farther from the cottage, until the pursuit had carried him a great distance from Panchavaṭī and from Sītā. And when at last Rāma, wearying of the chase and certain now that the thing was no true animal, drew his bow and loosed a shaft that struck the golden stag down, the demon’s final and most treacherous stroke was played.

For Mārīcha, dying, reverting in his death-throes to his true demon form, used the last of his sorcery to work the ruin he had been sent to work. He cried out, and he cried out in Rāma’s own voice, perfectly mimicked, a cry of anguish and distress: Ah, Sītā! Ah, Lakshmaṇa! as though Rāma himself were stricken, wounded, calling desperately for help.

The false cry rang through the forest in Rāma’s very tones, and then Mārīcha died, his part played, his death exactly the death he had foreseen and chosen, at the hands of Rāma, and the trap was sprung.

The cry reached the cottage, and it reached Sītā, and it undid her. For it was Rāma’s voice, or seemed to be, crying out in mortal distress, and Sītā’s heart turned over with terror for her husband. She turned to Lakshmaṇa and begged him, commanded him, to go at once to Rāma’s aid, for surely Rāma was in danger, surely that was his cry of pain, surely he needed help or he would not have called.

And Lakshmaṇa, torn now between two duties, hesitated, and his hesitation was wisdom, and it was overborne. He knew Rāma. He knew that no danger in that forest could wring such a cry from his brother, that Rāma was beyond the power of any demon to reduce to such a helpless scream, that the cry must therefore be a trick, an illusion, a snare exactly like the golden stag itself. And he knew, too, his charge: to guard Sītā and not to leave her.

He tried to reason with her, to calm her, to tell her that the cry was surely false, that Rāma was in no danger, that it was a demon’s trick to draw them out, that he must not leave her side.

But Sītā, in her terror for Rāma, would not be calmed, and here she spoke words that she would regret to the end of her days, words that were unjust and cruel, wrung from her by fear. She turned on Lakshmaṇa in her panic and accused him. Why do you delay, she cried, why do you refuse to help your brother? Do you wish him dead? Is that it? Do you covet me, that you would let Rāma die so that you might have me for yourself? Is that why you cling to my side and will not go to him?

She flung these terrible accusations at the most loyal of men, the brother who had given up everything to serve Rāma, who guarded her honour as his own, and the injustice of them was staggering, and they came from a place of pure unreasoning terror, and they wounded Lakshmaṇa to the soul. We should feel the pity of this, for no one here is truly at fault, and that is the deepest sorrow of it. Sītā’s cruel words came not from any wickedness but from a wife’s blind terror for her husband; she was not herself; fear had unmade her judgment.

And Lakshmaṇa’s yielding came not from any weakness but from the impossible position she had put him in, for how could he stay at the side of a woman who was accusing him of the vilest motives, who was commanding him in the name of his brother’s life to go? The accusation made his staying unbearable and his going a kind of forced obedience. He was trapped between his charge to guard her and the intolerable thing she had made of his guarding.

At last, stung beyond bearing and unable to remain, Lakshmaṇa yielded. But before he went, he did what he could to protect her. He drew, the tellers say, a line upon the ground around the cottage, a boundary, the Lakshmaṇa Rekhā, and he charged Sītā with all his earnestness never to cross it, never to step beyond that protective line, for within it she would be safe, and beyond it lay danger.

And having drawn the line and made her promise, and having reproached her gently for her cruel words, and having called on the powers of the forest to guard her, Lakshmaṇa went, against his own judgment, against his charge, driven out by Sītā’s terror and her unjust accusation, to seek his brother.

And the cottage was left unguarded, which was the whole aim of the trick, and no sooner was Lakshmaṇa gone than the last player in the design appeared. Rāvaṇa came. He had watched and waited, and now, with Rāma lured away and Lakshmaṇa driven off, he came to the cottage, but not in his own terrible form; he came disguised as a wandering ascetic, a holy man, a harmless mendicant begging alms, in saffron robes, with a staff and a begging bowl, the very image of sanctity.

And Sītā, alone, seeing what appeared to be a holy man at the edge of the grove asking for alms, was caught by the oldest and gentlest of obligations, the duty of hospitality, the sacred rule that a guest, above all a holy guest, must be received and fed and never turned away. It would have been a sin, by everything she had been taught, to refuse a holy mendicant. And so, to offer him food, trusting his holy appearance, bound by the law of hospitality, she stepped across the line that Lakshmaṇa had drawn.

And the instant she crossed it, the disguise fell away. The ascetic became the demon, the ten-headed lord of Lankā in his full and terrible power, and before Sītā could flee or cry out he seized her, and lifted her, and rose into the air in his aerial chariot, bearing her away, up and away over the forest, southward, toward the sea and Lankā, while she screamed and struggled helplessly in his grasp and the empty forest echoed with her cries.

The trap had closed. The golden stag, the false cry, the driven-off guardian, the holy disguise, the crossed line, every piece of the cunning wicked design had done its work, and Sītā was taken, borne away through the sky by the lord of the demons, and the whole vast tragedy that Mārīcha had foreseen and Rāvaṇa had refused to fear was now, irrevocably, set loose upon the world.