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The night in the Ashoka grove has reached its heaviest hour. Ravana has gone back to his palace, his sword put off for a month. The rakshasis set around her have heard Trijata’s dream, fallen at her feet, and gone off this way and that. Under the tree Sita is left with one thought: when the month is out, that vile night-walker will kill her. Trijata is with her, the one woman in that company she can call her own. And above her, hidden in the Ashoka’s leaves, the monkey who crossed a hundred yojanas of sea to find her has watched everything since he came. He has still said nothing.
What Sita asks for now is wood, and fire for the wood. She has a month of life ahead of her, and she asks for a pyre. The one who could end her grief with a sentence is in the branches over her head. Hanuman has been asking himself what to do since before Ravana came into the grove.
What follows begins with a small object: a ring drops out of the tree. Between its fall and the moment she believes it, Tulsidas spends six chaupais and a doha. Because a woman who has had months of pressure and deceit put before her does not know the truth in an instant. The episode is that distance. It ends with the same woman calling the monkey her son and blessing him to be ageless and deathless.
Above the tree and below
The main figures in this episode
- Sita Janaka’s daughter. She sits under the Ashoka set on leaving her body, and before the episode ends she is giving blessings and leave.
- Hanuman Rama‘s envoy. First a witness hidden in the leaves, then a voice, then a body standing before her, and at the last a son.
- Trijata the rakshasi whom Sita calls mother and the companion of her misfortune. She holds Sita’s feet, tells her there is no fire to be had at night, and goes home.
- The ring marked with Rama’s name. It reaches her before the envoy speaks, and says what it has to say without a word.
- Rama nowhere in the grove, and present through all of it in three ways: in the ring, in the story, and in the message.
- Lakshmana here only this much: Sita asks after him with his brother, and Hanuman answers that he is with Rama and is well.
- Ravana who never comes before her in this episode. The term he set keeps running, and the commentary hears his words in one line of hers.
- The Ashoka tree which Sita begs to make its own name true.
Wood is being asked for
The month Ravana announced is being counted in Sita’s mind, and she can see where the count ends. In the chaupai that opens this episode she stops waiting for that end and means to take it into her own hands. With her hands joined to a rakshasi, she says: “Mother, you are the companion of my misfortune. Find some way, and quickly, by which I can leave this body. This separation is past bearing. I cannot bear it any longer.”
Of all the women set over her in Lanka, one has turned out to be someone she can call the companion of her misfortune. She belongs to the very band posted here to frighten her. Earlier this same night Trijata told the others her dream of a monkey burning Lanka and called out that it would come true in four days. Now the woman who announced Rama’s victory is asked to build a pyre for the woman the victory is for.
Sita names the means herself. “Bring wood and build a pyre, and then, mother, set fire to it. Make my love come true, wise one.” The pyre is her way of keeping faith. A love has been claimed, and she sees one road left to make the claim good. Then she gives her other reason. The commentary hears Ravana in it: “Who can go on hearing, with these ears, words that are like a spear?”
Trijata answers first with her hands. She took hold of Sita’s feet and reasoned with her, telling her of Rama’s might, his strength, and his fame. Then she gave the one reason no one can argue with. “Listen, delicate one: there is no fire to be had at night.” With that she went to her own house. The reason is true, and it also moves the fire to the far side of the night. Before this night is over, a ring will fall.
Embers in the sky, and none on the earth
Now the grove is empty of company: a woman, a tree, and above them a witness she knows nothing about. What Sita says next she says in her own mind, the commentary reads. The picture Tulsi draws of how separation sees is among the hardest in the Ramcharitmanas. Fate itself has turned against me, she says: the fire will not come, and the pain will not end. She looks up, and the sky is full of embers. The stars have become burning coals. So many embers up there, she says, and not one comes down to earth.
Then the moon. The moon the world calls cool she calls a thing of fire. She reproaches it for not raining its fire down, as if it too knew her for the ill-fated one. Then she turns to the tree she sits under. “Hear my plea, Ashoka tree. Take away my grief, and make your name true.” Ashoka means without grief, and under the tree that carries that name a woman is ready to die of grief.
And what she asks the tree for is fire. The young leaves of an Ashoka come out red, and to her they look like flames. “Your new leaves are like fire. Give me that fire, and do not make an end of this sickness of separation.” The commentary opens that last phrase: do not let the sickness of separation grow until it reaches its limit.
Then Tulsi lifts his eyes to the branches. All of this has had a witness. Seeing Sita in the extremity of her separation, that instant passed for Hanuman like a kalpa, one of the ages by which the life of the worlds is measured. He has the strength to stop what is happening below him. What he does not yet have is the right way to speak. That waiting feels to him like ages.
A ring dropped before her
Hanuman has not spoken since he came into the grove. The sortha gives him two silent motions: he considered in his heart, and he let a ring fall. Tulsi’s picture for the fall needs the chaupai before it: it was as if the Ashoka had given her an ember. She had just asked the tree for exactly that, and something drops from its branches. At first she takes it for the answer. So she rejoices. She rose and took it in her hand, and the commentary says plainly what she took it for: an ember.
All night she has sat with her eyes on her own feet. Now, for the first time, she stands, because she believes the means of her death has come. Tulsi passes over it in silence and sets the truth in front of her in the next chaupai.
Marked with Rama’s name
She looked at what was in her hand. It was a ring, lovely and very beautiful, with Rama’s name cut into it. She knew it. She stared at it in astonishment, and joy and grief rose in her at once. Her heart was in turmoil.
The joy is that the sign belongs to the one she has been waiting for. The grief is the question of how it came here. A ring that should be on a finger far across the sea has dropped out of the dark into a garden in Lanka. The first meaning that comes to mind is a frightening one.
What maya cannot make
Now comes the chaupai that keeps this episode clear of easy tears. Sita thinks, and her thinking runs like an argument. First: who could conquer Rama, whom no one can conquer? So the ring was never taken from him by force. Second: a thing like this cannot be made by maya. The commentary says what the ring is, in its reading: wholly free of maya’s material, divine, made of consciousness. This garden has shown her what Lanka can show, and this is of another order.
Both steps lead to one conclusion, that the ring is real, and still her mind will not rest on it. Tulsi says only that she turned over thought after thought. While she was still turning them over, a voice came: Hanuman spoke sweet words.
The story, from the start
The voice keeps its own name back and begins with Rama’s virtues. The moment she heard, Sita’s grief fled. She listened with her ears and her mind together, and the speaker went back to the very beginning and told her the whole story.
The order is Hanuman’s good sense. A stranger appearing suddenly before a captive woman would have met fear first. So Rama’s name came first, cut into the ring, then Rama’s virtues, then the whole story. Only after all of it did Hanuman show himself. What she needed before any promise of safety was news of her own people, and when it came her grief fled.
Whoever spoke, why not appear
The story ends, and Sita calls out to a speaker she has not seen. “The one who told this story, nectar to the ears: brother, why does he not show himself?” With the word brother, what was a voice a moment ago has become kin. And set this beside her words about Ravana a little while ago. His words were a spear to the ears. This story is nectar to them.
Then Hanuman came near, and Sita turned and sat with her face away from him, as the commentary reads it. Tulsi gives the reason in one word: her mind was astonished. The story had been so large, and the one who came forward was so small a monkey. There is courtesy in that turning away and caution too. Trust has not come yet, and bringing it is now the speaker’s work.
I am Rama’s envoy, mother Janaki
He answers her in two lines, and does four things in them. “I am Rama’s envoy, mother Janaki. I swear it truly, by Rama himself. This ring, mother, I brought here myself. Rama gave it to me as a sahidani for you.” He says who he is. He calls her mother. He swears, by the very one whose envoy he claims to be. And he says what matters most: the ring had a carrier, and the carrier is here.
A sahidani, the commentary says, is a sign or token of recognition, a thing that can stand in the place of the one who sent it. On the day the search parties set out, Rama called this envoy close, touched his head. Knowing him for his own servant, he gave him the ring from his hand. The woman it has reached has every right to test it. So the order here is the sign, then the story, then the speaker himself, then the oath.
How man and monkey came together
Her next question is courteous and exacting. “Tell me, how did a man and a monkey come to be together?” It tests him, and it also claims him. A prince of Ayodhya sending a monkey across the sea as his envoy needs explaining. Hanuman makes no excuses and tells her how the alliance came about, just as it happened.
Then the doha. Hearing the monkey’s words, so full of love, trust was born in her mind. She knew him for what he was: in mind, word, and deed, a servant of Rama.
Tulsi is exact about where the trust came from: the love in the words. The ring, the story, and the oath had each been laid before her. What did the work in the end was the feeling in the speaker’s voice, which could not be hidden. Her conclusion goes past whether he is telling the truth: he belongs to Rama in mind, word, and deed. The testing is over, and the recognizing has begun.
A ship in the sea of separation
Knowing him for Rama’s own, she felt her love for him grow deep. Her eyes filled, and the hair rose along her body. “Dear Hanuman, I was drowning in the sea of separation, and you have become my ship.” The woman who was asking for fire a little while ago is talking about staying afloat. That is the turn of the episode.
Her way of addressing him has changed too: first brother, now dear one. Each name she finds for him is closer than the last. This is a woman who, in all of Lanka, has had only Trijata to call her own.
Asking after him, and a complaint
Trust has come, and what follows is what follows in any house: she asks for news. “I would give myself for him. Now tell me how Rama is, and his younger brother with him.” The old phrase of offering oneself up for someone is spoken by a woman who was asking for a pyre earlier this night.
In the next line the asking becomes a complaint, and here the episode is at its most human. “Rama is tender of heart, and merciful. Then why, monkey, has he taken on this hardness?” She names his own nature and asks why its opposite is being shown to her.
Then lower still. “To give his servants joy is his natural way,” she says, placing herself among his servants. “Does he ever think of me at all? Dear one, will my eyes ever be cooled again by the sight of his dark, soft limbs?”
Then the words stop. Her eyes fill, and one sentence forces its way out: “Ah, lord, you have forgotten me altogether.” Tulsi turns straight to Hanuman and repeats the words he used before the ring fell: seeing Sita in the extremity of her separation. The first time, the sight was followed by a ring let fall. This time it is followed by speech, soft and humble.
A love twice yours
Hanuman’s answer is tight. “Mother, Rama is well, and his brother with him.” Welfare alone would be a thin answer to her complaint, so he adds at once that Rama grieves with her grief. Well in body, the commentary specifies, with her grief in his heart. Then the real answer to her question about hardness: “Mother, do not let your heart grow small. Rama’s love is twice your own.”
He gives her a measure, and the measure is her own love, the one she has been dying of under this tree. Only someone who has seen both sides could make that comparison, and Hanuman has seen Rama across the sea and this garden too.
“Now hear Rama’s message, mother, and hold firm as you hear it.” Asking her to hold firm before the message is a messenger’s caution. What happens next is the man: having said this much, his voice broke with feeling, and his eyes filled. The message has already worked on the one carrying it.
Rama’s message
The message opens with a plain report, given in Rama’s own voice. “Sita, in separation from you, everything has turned against me. The new leaves on the trees are like fire. The night is like the night of doom. The moon is like the sun.” The new leaves as fire are the very picture Sita used under the Ashoka a little while ago. Two people are seeing the world the same way, each without news of the other. Tulsi sets the two close enough for the reader to find the match.
The list grows sharper. “The beds of lotuses are like forests of spears. The clouds seem to rain boiling oil. The things that did me good now give me pain. The threefold breeze is like the breath of a serpent.” The commentary names the three, cool, gentle, and fragrant, and hears the serpent’s breath as venom and heat. In separation the world keeps its shape and changes its work: whatever was made to cool begins to burn.
One mind knows this truth
Then the message turns from the pictures to the one making them, and here is the line it is remembered for. “Telling a grief lessens it a little. But whom shall I tell? No one knows this. Beloved, the truth of our love is known to one mind only, mine.” This is said by a man with his brother beside him, with friends, and soon with a whole army. And still there is no one to tell.
“And that mind stays with you always. Know the whole taste of my love in just this much.” The message ends there, with no date and no plan. Hearing it, Sita was so lost in love that she had no sense left of her own body.
There is danger in that swoon, and Hanuman speaks at once. “Hold firm in your heart, mother. Remember Rama, who gives joy to those who serve him. Bring his greatness into your heart. Hear what I say, and let this faintness of heart go.” He leaves her separation where it is and sets the memory of Rama’s greatness beside it. The name he uses for Rama is the one she used a moment ago, giving joy to his servants.
Then the doha. “The rakshasa hosts are moths, and Rama’s arrows are fire. Mother, hold firm, and count the rakshasas as burned already.” A moth flies into the fire of its own accord, and the fire has only to burn. So Hanuman speaks of what has not yet happened as done.
Shall I take you now
Now Hanuman answers her complaint about hardness. “Had Rama had word of you, he would have made no delay.” The delay came from not knowing, and the not knowing is about to end, because of the one speaking. Then a picture: “Sita, when the sun of Rama’s arrow rises, where will the darkness of the rakshasa host be?” No one fights the dark. The sun comes up and it is gone.
Then an offer that could have turned the kand. “Mother, I would carry you away from here this very moment.” In the same breath he stops himself. “But I swear by Rama: I have no order from him.” It is his second oath to her, again by Rama. The first was so she would believe him, and this one holds him back. The strength is here, the chance is here, the night is here, and the order is missing. That decides it. “Hold firm a few days more, mother. Rama will come, and the monkeys with him.” Now three counts of time stand in this garden: Ravana’s month, spoken over a drawn sword. Trijata’s four days, called out to the rakshasis. And the envoy’s few days, spoken softly.
“He will kill the night-walkers and take you home, and Narada and the others will sing his fame through the three worlds.” A woman carried off by stealth could be carried back by stealth. The deed one monkey could do tonight is held back for want of an order, so that it stays Rama’s own deed, with the fame the three worlds will sing.
Sita’s answer is practical, and so easy to believe. “Son, all the monkeys will be like you, and the rakshasas are great warriors.” The address has moved again, from brother to dear one to son. She calls the one she doubts her son. The doubt, as the commentary reads it, is about how small the monkeys are. His heart is outside it.
The doubt, and the body
“In my heart there is a very great doubt.” Hanuman answers without a word: he showed her his own body. It was like a mountain of gold, which the commentary names as Sumeru, terrible in battle, enormously strong, heroic. It is the golden-mountain body the invocation of this kand bowed to. Since he came into the grove it has sat hidden in the leaves.
Then reliance came into Sita’s mind, and at once he took his small form again. He showed as much as the doubt needed, for as long as it lasted, and not a moment longer.
And what he says from the small form is smaller still. “Listen, mother: monkeys who live in the branches have no great strength or wisdom. By Rama’s might, the smallest of snakes can eat Garuda.” He has just shown her a body like a golden mountain, and this is what he says about it. Tulsi makes the point with a picture turned upside down: Garuda eats snakes, and here the smallest snake eats him.
The blessing
Hearing the monkey’s words, steeped in bhakti, might, splendor, and strength, Sita’s mind was content.
Knowing him for one dear to Rama, she blessed him. “Dear one, be a treasury of strength and of good conduct. Be ageless, son, and deathless, a treasury of virtues. May Rama show you great grace.” The invocation of this kand bowed to Hanuman as a treasury of every virtue and as Rama’s dear devotee before the story began. Here the woman he was sent to find knows him as the second and gives him the first as a blessing.
Of all those gifts, the last is the one that reached him. At the words “may Rama show you grace,” Hanuman was lost in love. Tulsi says nothing of what agelessness or deathlessness meant to him. He bowed his head at her feet again and again. With his hands joined he said: “Now, mother, I have done what I had to do, and I am fulfilled. Your blessing is known everywhere to be unfailing.”
Hunger, and leave
Tulsi closes so heavy an episode with hunger. “Listen, mother: a great hunger has come over me, looking at these trees with their beautiful fruit.” The one who showed himself like a golden mountain a little while ago asks for fruit the way a son asks at home.
Her worry is a mother’s too. “Listen, son: this grove is guarded by rakshasas, great warriors, and heavy ones.” Now her concern is for the envoy himself. His reply has two parts. “Of them, mother, I have no fear at all, if it gives your heart pleasure.” The claim of strength comes first, and right behind it he places that strength under her leave.
She gave leave after a look. Seeing him skilled in wisdom and strength, she said: “Go, dear one. Hold Rama’s feet in your heart, and eat the sweet fruit.” The permission followed a judgment, made on the same two things he had just said monkeys lack. And the same two the invocation counted and Surasa tested. And it came with a condition: keep Rama’s feet in your heart while you eat.
From this one sentence the next episode begins: the grove will be laid waste, some of its guards killed, and the news carried to Ravana. The havoc Sundarkand is remembered for begins, with her leave, in the garden that was her prison. Its warrant looks exactly like a mother’s leave to a hungry son.
The delay after the ring
The ring is what this episode is remembered for, and what teaches most is the delay after it. Tulsi could have had her trust the ring the instant she knew it. He let her reason instead, let her turn her face away, let her ask her questions, and only then let trust arrive. When help reaches someone deep in grief, disbelief often comes first, and that disbelief is a kind of strength. Someone who has been deceived before keeps her watchfulness as the last thing she owns, and Tulsi gives it its full time.
Then there is the envoy’s manner. Hanuman had strength, proof, and his chance, and the trust came from words full of love. He showed his large form once, for exactly as long as the doubt lasted, and became small again. Someone who lifts his strength as far as the work needs and sets it down the moment the work is done can be trusted.
And there is the message, which promised nothing: no date, no army, no rescue. It said only where Rama’s mind lives, always beside her. The woman who asked for a pyre earlier this night was made able to live by that sentence. And the blessing she gave its carrier was agelessness and deathlessness, and with them Rama’s grace, which is the part he heard.
The same story, elsewhere: Valmiki’s Ramayana, chapter 21: The Ashoka Grove, the Sight of Sita, and the Ring.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Sundarkand, sortha 12 to doha 17, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.