In Preparation for Rāma's Coronation, Queen Kaikeyī asks the King for her boons - the coronation of her son Bharata and exile of Rāma; Rāma goes in exile for 14 years with Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa, Source: ramayana.com, Access date: July 22, 2022.
02. Ayodhya Kanda01,02.
First revision: Jul.22, 2022
Last change: Oct.05, 2022
Searched, Gathered, Rearranged, and Compiled by Apirak Kanchanakongkha.
The Ayodhyākāṇḍa
As the name suggests, the second book of the epic is set mainly in Ayodhyā. Here, we find that, in the absence of Prince Bharata, who is away on a visit to his maternal family, Daśaratha has decided to retire from the kingship and consecrate Rāma as prince regent in his stead. The announcement of Rāma’s impending consecration is greeted with general rejoicing, and elaborate preparations for the ceremony are begun. On the eve of the auspicious event, however, Kaikeyī, the middlemost of the king’s three wives and his favorite, is roused to a fit of jealousy and resentment by her maidservant, Mantharā, under whose guidance she claims two boons that the king had once granted her long ago but never fulfilled. In his infatuation for the beautiful Kaikeyī and constrained by his rigid devotion to his given word, the king, although heartbroken, accedes to her demands and orders Rāma exiled to the wilderness for fourteen years while allowing the succession to pass from him to Kaikeyī’s son, Bharata.
Despite the rebellious rage of his loyal brother Lakṣmaṇa, Rāma, exhibiting the stoicism, adherence to righteousness, and a filial devotion for which he is widely revered, expresses no distress upon hearing of this stroke of malign fate and prepares immediately to carry out his father’s orders. Sītā resists Rāma’s instructions to remain behind in the capital and vows to follow him into hardship and exile. Rāma gives away all of his wealth and, donning the garb of a forest ascetic, departs for the wilderness, accompanied only by his faithful wife, Sītā, and his devoted brother, Lakṣmaṇa. The city's entire population is consumed with grief for the exiled prince and the king; his cherished hopes for Rāma’s consecration are shattered, and his beloved son, banished by his own hand, dies of a broken heart.
Messengers are dispatched to summon Bharata back from his length of stay at the court of his uncle in Rājagṛha. But the prince indignantly refused to profit from the scheming of Mantharā and his mother. He rejects the throne and proceeds with a grand entourage to the forest to persuade Rāma to return and rule. Still, Rāma, determined to carry out his father's order to the letter, refuses to return before the end of the fourteen years set for his exile. The brothers reach an impasse resolved only when Bharata agrees to govern as regent in Rāma’s name. In token of Rāma’s sovereignty, Bharata takes his brother’s sandals to sit on the throne in his stead. He vows to remain outside the capital until Rāma, Sītā, and Lakṣmaṇa, then abandons their pleasant mountaintop dwelling as being too close to the city and moves south into the wild and rākṣasa-infested Daṇḍaka forest.
@india.in.pixels, Access date: Mar.30, 2023.
The Ayodhyākāṇḍa is noteworthy in several respects. For one thing, it raises ethical questions about the actions of the old king Daśaratha. Although he is portrayed as the model of a righteous king, it appears that, as hinted at in the book's opening and confirmed near its end by Rāma himself, the king had once promised the royal succession to Kaikeyī’s son as a prenuptial agreement. Moreover, it shows the king as sub-ordinating his royal duty to his infatuation for the beautiful junior queen in his efforts to placate her even before she mentions the matter of his two unfulfilled boons. In this way, it constructs the old king as a foil for Rāma and helps us understand the hard choices the latter will make in service of his ideal of righteous kingship. In addition, the book gives us a particular insight into how the author understood the gendered politics of the royal women’s quarters as Mantharā explains to the naïve and malleable Kaikeyī how her status as the king’s favorite come to haunt her should her rival Kausalyā become queen mother upon the consecration of Rāma.
Sources, Vocabularies, and Narratives:
01. from. "The Illustrated Ramayana: The Timeless Epic of Duty, Love, and Redemption," ISBN: 978-0-2414-7376-4, Penguin Random House, 2017, Printed and bound in China, www.dk.com.
02. from. "The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki - THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRANSLATION," Translated by Robert P. Goldman, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, Rosalind Lefeber, Sheldon I. Pollock, and Barend A. van Nooten, Revised and Edited by Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, ISBN 978-0-6912-0686-8, 2021, Princeton University Press, Printed in the United States of America.
