Lakshmana

Four boys are growing up in the palace at Ayodhya, and one of them moves through the rooms like the shadow of his elder brother. Sarga 18 of the Bala Kanda gives him his name. Kaikeyi has borne Bharata; then Sumitra, the second of the king’s principal queens, gives birth to twin sons, Lakshmana and Shatrughna; and on the eleventh day Vasishtha, acting for the king, names Sumitra’s first son Lakshmana. In the same sarga the poem says a thing it will go on proving in every kanda that follows. From his earliest infancy Lakshmana was deeply attached to Rama, and “Lakshmana, rich in splendor, was a second life to Rama, moving about outside his body.” Without him Rama would not close his eyes in sleep, and if a dainty dish was set before him he would not taste it unless Lakshmana was there. Whenever Rama rode out to hunt, Lakshmana followed at his heels at once, armed with bow and arrows, guarding him on every side. Those two postures, a step behind and a bow in hand, carry him through fourteen years of forest, through the war at Lanka, and at the last to the gate of the palace at Ayodhya, where they become the whole of his story.

The boy’s first long road runs behind Vishvamitra. In sargas 20 to 30 of the Bala Kanda the sage comes to the palace gate and asks for the eldest son, and the moment Vasishtha has finished speaking the king sends for Rama, “and for Lakshmana with him. He knew the two could not be separated; one brother had never gone anywhere the other did not follow.” On the bank of the Sarayu both brothers receive the lore called Bala and Atibala, the chain of mantras under whose shelter hunger and thirst and fatigue lose their hold. In Tataka’s forest Rama breaks her rain of rocks with a rain of arrows and cuts off her arms, and it is Lakshmana, angry now, who cuts the ears from her head and the tip from her nose before Rama’s arrow finds her chest. At Siddhashrama the two of them keep watch over the sacrifice for six days, and on the sixth, the day of the pressing of the soma, Rama turns to his brother with two words: “Be ready. Be watchful.” In Mithila, in sarga 73, Janaka gives away two daughters with joined palms, Sita to Rama and Urmila to Lakshmana, and his word to the younger prince is as short as a wedding allows: “Lakshmana, come; may good come to you. Accept Urmila, whom I give you. Take her hand in yours; let no time be lost.” Urmila’s name enters the poem under the wedding canopy. The fourteen years of the forest Lakshmana spends alone.

The Anger That Rose from Love

Sarga 21 of the Ayodhya Kanda lets Lakshmana speak at length for the first time, and what he says no other son in the poem ever says. The order of exile has been delivered in Kausalya’s apartments; the mother is wailing; and Lakshmana, who has stood through all of it, turns to her and swears an oath. “Lady, I swear to you by my bow, and by every merit I have won through truth and charity and the worship of the gods, that I am devoted to my eldest brother from the core of my heart. If Rama walks into a blazing fire or into the forest, know that I have already walked in ahead of him.” Then comes the sentence that rises against the father: “I will kill my father, that wretched old man with his mind fastened on Kaikeyi, gone back into childhood in his dotage, and contemptible.” Rama hears him out, and he begins his answer by granting his brother everything, his love, his valor, his strength, his glory, which nothing surpasses. Then he sets the law down in front of him. “Dharma is supreme in this world. Truth is rooted in dharma. This command of my father’s rests on dharma, and so it is the highest thing there is.” And the instruction: “So give up this unworthy thought of taking the throne by capturing the king or killing him, this idea that stands on nothing except the warrior’s pride in force. Take your stand on dharma. Do not be harsh.” In sarga 23 Lakshmana comes back at him with his brows knit until a furrow stands between them, hissing like a great cobra in its hole, and makes the case for human effort against fate: fate is for cowards and weaklings, the brave never shelter in it, and he will turn it back by sheer force like a runaway elephant drunk on its own rut. He ends on a single line. “I am your servant.” Rama wipes the tears from his brother’s face, comforts him, and comforts him again, and gives him the one sentence he has already given his mother: “Know me, gentle brother, to be firmly obedient to the command of my parents. That is the road the righteous have walked.”

Where the anger loses, the pleading begins. In sarga 31 Lakshmana has heard the whole exchange between Rama and Sita, and he presses his eldest brother’s feet hard with his face wet with tears. “If your mind is set on going to the forest, the forest of deer and elephants, then I will go with you, walking ahead with my bow in my hand. Without you I have no wish to climb to the world of the gods. I do not want deathlessness. I do not want the lordship of the worlds.” Rama holds him back and gives his reasons: with both of them gone, who will serve Kausalya, and who will serve Sumitra, once Kaikeyi holds the kingdom and Bharata stands by her? Lakshmana’s answer is the fullest definition of service in the poem. Kausalya, whose own dependents hold thousands of villages, can support a thousand men like him; “So make me your follower. There is no unrighteousness in it. I will have gained my object, and your purpose will be served as well. I will take my strung bow, with a spade and a basket on my back, and walk ahead of you and show you the way. Every day I will bring you wild roots and fruit, and whatever else the forest yields that is fit to be offered in the fire. You will sport with Sita on the mountain tops, and I will do everything for you, whether you are awake or asleep.” Rama is greatly pleased, and sends him to the house of Vasishtha for the two divine bows that Varuna once gave to Janaka, the two impenetrable coats of mail, and the two quivers whose arrows never run out. Sarga 40 is the hour of leaving. Lakshmana bows to Kausalya first and only then clasps the feet of his own mother, and Sumitra bends over him, breathes in the scent of his hair, and gives him the sentence a whole exile can be lived inside. “Take Rama for Dasharatha your father. Look on Sita, the daughter of Janaka, as you look on me, your mother. Count the forest as Ayodhya, your home. And go, dear son, in gladness.”

A Night on the Ganga, an Afternoon on Chitrakuta

At Shringaverapura, in sarga 51, Rama and Sita lie asleep on a bed of straw under the ingudi tree by the river, and Guha, the chief of the Nishadas, the hunting and boating people of the Ganga, has a comfortable bed made ready and tells the prince to lie down on it: the forest people are used to hardship, and he and his kinsmen will keep watch over Rama with their bows. Lakshmana’s answer is the truest sentence of that night. “But when Rama, the son of Dasharatha, is lying on the ground with Sita, how can I sleep? How can I take food, even the little that keeps a body alive, let alone any comfort?” Then he speaks of Ayodhya, that the king will not live long now, that by this hour the women of the city have screamed themselves hoarse, that he does not expect Kausalya or his own mother to outlive the night, and Guha, pinched hard by their misfortune, weeps as an elephant weeps when the fever is on it. Bharata comes to this same landing afterward, and Guha tells him the night he watched with his own eyes.

On Chitrakuta, in sarga 96, Lakshmana is up a flowering sal tree in moments, and from the top he sees a huge army to the north, dense with elephants and horses and chariots. He calls down to Rama from the branches: put out the fire, let Sita go into the cave, keep the bow ready. On a chariot below a banner flies with a white staff, and on the banner is the device of the kovidara tree, and one look at it is enough for him. “Raghava, that kovidara banner is going to come under our hand in battle, and I will finally have Bharata in front of me, face to face, the man on whose account you and Sita and I have suffered so much.” Then the thing he said of his father at Ayodhya, said now of a brother: “Bharata has come against us as an enemy, and an enemy who comes like that deserves to be killed.” Rama lets him finish and sets about calming him. He will no more accept a fortune that comes to him over the bodies of his kinsmen than he would eat a dish mixed with poison; whatever he wants of dharma and wealth and the earth itself, he wants for the sake of his brothers; “And if it is the kingdom that makes you talk like this, then when I see Bharata I will tell him to hand the kingdom to Lakshmana, and Bharata will simply say, ‘Very well,’ and do it.” Shame goes through Lakshmana so completely that he seems to draw back inside his own body, and he finds something else to say: “I think it must be our father, King Dasharatha himself, who has come to see you.” Rama looks for the white parasol the whole world knows and cannot find it, and stops. Lakshmana comes down from the top of the sal tree and stands at his brother’s side with his hands folded.

Panchavati: A Joke, and a Cry

In sarga 18 of the Aranya Kanda Shurpanakha, turned away by Rama, swings toward the younger brother, and Lakshmana, who can turn a sentence as well as Rama can, smiles and gives her an answer of his own. “I am a slave, lady with the hue of a red lotus, dependent in everything on my worthy brother. Why would you become a slave’s wife and make yourself a slave-woman?” The joke goes straight past her, and she comes at Sita with her eyes burning like live coals. Rama catches her and holds her back with his own hand, and the anger in his voice is for his brother: “One should never trade jokes with cruel and unworthy people.” Then the order, and Lakshmana draws his sword and cuts off her ears and her nose while Rama looks on. From that mutilated face the word travels to Khara and Dushana at Janasthana, and from there, across the sea, to Ravana.

In sarga 43 a deer with flanks of gold and silver stands at the edge of the hermitage. Sita is delighted, and suspicion takes Lakshmana at the first sight of it. “I conclude this deer is that very rakshasa, Maricha.” Rama goes anyway, and his last words going are an order: “Keep Sita by your side, Lakshmana, and remain vigilant every moment, on your guard from every quarter.” In sarga 44 the arrow goes through the deer’s heart, and the dying Maricha cries out in a voice that matches Rama’s exactly, “Alas, Sita! Ah, Lakshmana!” Sarga 45 is the hour for which Lakshmana has no right answer. Sita tells him to run; he remembers his brother’s command and does not stir. He explains that Rama cannot be killed in battle, that the cry was a rakshasa’s conjuring, as unreal as a city seen in the sky, and that she is a sacred trust placed in his charge. Then Sita says the harshest words anyone in the poem says to him. “Ignoble, merciless Lakshmana, cruel in your deeds, disgrace of your line, I believe Rama’s great adversity is dear to you.” And that he followed Rama into the forest with a hidden motive, for her sake, “or because Bharata engaged you as his agent.” Lakshmana folds his hands. “I dare not answer you,” he says, “because you are a deity to me.” But “I cannot bear these words of yours, daughter of Janaka, that go into both my ears like a heated steel arrow.” He calls every creature in the forest to witness what he says, greets her with his palms joined, and goes off in search of Rama, looking back at her again and again. Behind him, waiting for exactly this, Ravana comes toward the hut in the dress of a wandering mendicant.

At the Gate of Kishkindha

In sarga 30 of the Kishkindha Kanda the rains have passed, autumn has come down clear, and in the cave on Prasravana Rama is coming apart with longing for Sita. Sugriva had given his word that the search would begin when the rains ended, and from Kishkindha comes the sound of song and drums. Rama sends Lakshmana, and gives him the message to carry: “The road by which Vali was killed and departed is not closed.” In sarga 31 Lakshmana goes past the message. Sugriva will not hold to the conduct of the good; let him die and go look on his brother Vali; “Let Vali’s son Angada sit on the throne with the vanara chiefs and carry out the search for Sita.” This time Rama stops him before he goes. “Lakshmana, no righteous man like you would ever, in this world, so much as think a sin like the killing of a friend. A man who masters his anger through sound judgment acts with courage and integrity.” Instructed to speak in language full of comfort, Lakshmana sets out, and reaches Kishkindha tearing down sal and tala trees by main force, overturning mountain crests, crushing rocks the way an elephant does.

In sargas 33 and 34 he passes through seven courts to the inner apartments, hears the tinkle of anklets, and stops, held back by his own conduct from going into the women’s rooms; in the rush of that anger he twangs his bowstring, and the directions ring with it. Sugriva sends Tara. At the sight of a woman Lakshmana stands with his eyes lowered and his mind withdrawn, and the anger dies down in him; what he says to her is a question. “Tara, who should be devoted to your husband’s good, this husband of yours, ruled by his senses, has forgotten the gathering of dharma and of wealth; why do you not wake him to it?” Tara tells him that the vanaras have already been summoned and are arriving this very day, and with her leave he goes in, and finds Sugriva on a golden seat holding Ruma in a close embrace, and the anger comes up in him all over again. Sugriva breaks the great garland at his neck and throws it down, and the wine goes out of him with it. By the end of the sarga the man who came to leave a corpse on that seat is asking its occupant’s pardon, and calling him friend: “Hearing the grief-struck Rama’s lament, I spoke to you those harsh words; forgive them, friend.”

Three Times in Lanka

In the Yuddha Kanda Lakshmana goes down to the earth three times, and each time Rama’s life goes down with him. In sarga 73 Indrajit, hidden in the sky, brings the vanara army down with the missile of Brahma, and under that rain of arrows Rama turns to his brother: “Therefore, wise brother, keep your mind unshaken and bear this hail of arrows with me here, today.” Both princes fall wounded, and Hanuman brings the mountain of herbs from the Himalaya. Then Indrajit conjures a likeness of Sita and cuts her down before Hanuman’s eyes, and at the news Rama falls senseless into Lakshmana’s lap. In that hour Lakshmana’s anger rises against no father, brother, or friend; it rises against dharma itself. “Dharma cannot save you, worthy brother, though you keep to the noble path and have fully mastered your senses, from reverses like this; and so dharma is useless. If unrighteousness had any effect, Ravana would have gone down to hell, and you, who are full of virtue, would never have met adversity.” Vibhishana arrives and will not let him finish. Sita is alive; the slaughter was an illusion; and Brahma’s boon has written Indrajit’s death into a single place. He will go this day to the sanctuary called Nikumbhila, under the banyan where he has always poured his oblations before a battle, and if he returns with that offering complete he will be beyond the power of the gods themselves.

The battle of sargas 86 to 90 is among the longest the poem holds, and at the end of it Lakshmana fits to his bow the missile presided over by Indra, draws it to the string’s full length, and speaks to the deity who lives in the arrow a prayer aimed at one purpose. “If Rama, the son of Dasharatha, has set his mind on dharma, if he is true to his promise, and if there is no one to rival him in prowess, then kill this son of Ravana.” The arrow carries off Indrajit’s head with its earrings and its helmet. Lakshmana comes back to Rama bathed in blood, leaning on the shoulders of Vibhishana and Hanuman, and Rama draws him by force onto his lap and holds him there, wounded as he is. “Well done, Lakshmana. I am gratified by what you have done. You have accomplished a thing that no one else could have accomplished.” And then: “By good fortune you have severed the right arm of the merciless Ravana, for Indrajit was the support he leaned his whole weight on.” In sarga 101 Ravana himself is on the field, and a javelin that the demon Maya fashioned by magic rises for Vibhishana; Lakshmana comes between them with volleys of arrows, and Ravana turns the javelin on him. It strikes the breast of a man standing there without fear, passes through the son of Sumitra, and goes into the earth. Rama takes hold of it with his own hands, draws it out, snaps it in two, and laments with his hands still on the bow. “Wives can be found anywhere. Kinsmen can be found anywhere. I see no place on earth where a brother born of the same womb could be found again.” Hanuman brings back the peak of Mahodaya with its healing herbs, and the first words of the man who rises from the ground are a rebuke to his brother for wavering. “Those who always speak the truth never let their vow come to nothing; keeping one’s vow is the mark of greatness. Keep your pledge by killing Ravana today.”

Across the Ganga, and at the Palace Gate

In sarga 45 of the Uttara Kanda Rama calls his brothers together and gives the order himself: Lakshmana is to seat Sita in a chariot in the morning and leave her beyond the borders of the kingdom, near the hermitage of Valmiki, and no one is to speak to him of Sita again. When the night has passed Lakshmana, his face drawn thin, has Sumantra yoke the swiftest horses, and tells Sita that the king has approved her wish to see the hermitages of the sages on the bank of the Ganga. She feels a joy without equal, and gathers garments and jewels for the wives of the sages. On the road she counts the ill omens, and Lakshmana, withering inside and working hard to look glad, says only, “All is well.” At the sight of the Bhagirathi his composure breaks and he weeps aloud, and Sita asks why he cries at a parting of two nights from Rama. In sarga 47, on the far bank, he falls to the ground with his palms joined. “My heart is pierced through with a great dart, because I have been entrusted with this task, a task so cruel that the world will hold me to blame for it. I would have preferred a torture like death, or death itself. I beg of you, do not count this as my fault.” Sita gives him her message for the king, and before he turns to the boat Lakshmana says the one thing fourteen years of forest never made him say. “I have never looked upon your form; your feet alone have been the object of my eyes until this day. How am I to look at you now, left in this forest without Rama?” From the boat, and then from the chariot, he looks back over his shoulder again and again at the woman languishing on the far bank like someone with no one in the world. In Ayodhya he touches Rama’s feet and does the comforting himself: every union ends in parting, and the slander that drove Sita out will come back to the king in time.

The end comes at the gate. In sarga 104 Time arrives in the form of an ascetic and takes from Rama a condition before he will speak: whoever hears their talk or looks on them must be given up by the king to death. Rama sets Lakshmana himself at the door. In sarga 105 Durvasa comes and demands to see Rama this very instant; Lakshmana asks him to wait one short hour; and the sage goes dark with rage and swears to curse the city, the land, Bharata, Rama, and the whole line. Lakshmana turns the whole of it over in his mind and comes to a decision: “Let my death alone come, and let there be no destruction of all.” He goes in and announces the sage. Durvasa eats his fill, says “Well done, Rama,” and goes back to his hermitage, and in sarga 106 it is Lakshmana, cheerful and sweet-voiced, who comforts the brother sitting with his face bowed. “Kill me without any misgiving, gentle brother, and keep your vow; those men who break their promises go to hell.” Vasishtha tells the assembly that he saw this parting long ago in a vision: “Forsake him; Time is too strong.” And Rama, in the midst of them all, says the sentence. “So that dharma may not be overturned, I forsake you; and forsaking and killing are one and the same for the good.” Lakshmana’s eyes cloud with tears; he goes out at once and does not return to his own house. On the bank of the Sarayu he sips the water, folds his hands, draws in his senses, holds his breath, and does not let it go. Indra takes him up alive, in his own body, and the gods, seeing the fourth part of Vishnu come back to heaven, do him honor.

His Path

Bharata at Chitrakuta, and the Sandals · A brother up a sal tree, the kovidara banner, and Rama’s word that the kingdom be handed to Lakshmana for good.

The Rains, Sugriva’s Delay, and the Quarters of the Search · One twang of a bowstring at the door of the inner apartments, Tara’s words heard with lowered eyes, and a garland torn from Sugriva’s neck and thrown down.

The Death of Indrajit, and Ravana Takes the Field · A rite broken under the banyan at Nikumbhila, a condition laid on the arrow of Indra, and the javelin that was thrown for Vibhishana.

The One Who Walked Ahead

Read whole, Valmiki’s Lakshmana always stands on a boundary: behind the horse on the hunt, ahead of his brother on the forest road, awake all night at the door of the hut, and at the last at the palace gate, with Time inside and Durvasa outside. The man on the boundary says everything the man inside cannot say. The father deserves to die; Bharata deserves to die; Sugriva will be finished today; and at Lanka dharma itself is useless. Four times Rama hears that anger, grants it, and turns it, and four times Lakshmana lets himself be turned, and that is the secret of his story. No one in the poem dies of his anger. People die of his word: Shurpanakha’s face is cut, Indrajit’s head falls, and Sita is left on the far side of the Ganga. Whatever work Rama’s name cannot carry is handed to Lakshmana, and he finishes it with the blame on his own head. Sumitra told him at the leaving to count the forest as Ayodhya, and the son kept that lesson so completely that when he came home to Ayodhya he was given a door to stand at. In front of Durvasa he did the whole sum in a moment, one death or the ruin of all, and went in. Rama called forsaking the same as killing; Lakshmana took it as the last task of his vow and went alone to the Sarayu. The Bala Kanda had called him Rama’s second life moving about outside his body, and in the Uttara Kanda that life went out first, and Rama walked into the river after it.