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On this side of the sea a company of monkeys and bears has been sitting on kusha grass since the search brought them to the water. Sugriva gave the search a month, and said that anyone who came back past the month without news of Sita would be killed. The month ran out while they were still looking. On this shore they said they would not go back without news, and sat down. One of them was to cross the water. He told the rest to wait, bearing the hardship and living on bulbs, roots, and fruit, until he came back from seeing Sita. Then he went, and they have waited.
What reaches them first is a sound. From that sound the news travels: from the shore to a honey grove, from the grove to Sugriva. He hears a complaint and reads it as good news. And from Sugriva to a crystal rock where two brothers are sitting and the elder asks a question.
Lanka has burned, and the envoy who burned it stands before the one who sent him. The first thing Rama asks him is how Sita lives. Then a crest-jewel changes hands, her words are given to the one they were meant for. The envoy, when they are done, stops and says that her calamity is better left unsaid. Tulsidas gives that stopping its own line, and the episode is named for it.
The gathering for the returned envoy
The main figures in this episode
- Hanuman coming back from Lanka with a glad face that tells the others, before he speaks, that Rama’s work is done. The sight of him is a new birth to them.
- Rama seated on the crystal rock, whose first question to the returned envoy is how Sita lives.
- Lakshmana on the same rock, beside his elder brother, through all of the report.
- Sita who is nowhere in this episode and fills it, in a crest-jewel and in the words she sent.
- Sugriva the king of the monkeys, who takes the complaint that his grove is being laid waste as proof that the work is done.
- Angada the yuvraj, the crown prince, with whose consent the company puts its hands to the honey grove.
- Jambavan who speaks for Hanuman’s deeds before Rama and says that today their birth has borne its fruit.
- The keepers of the Madhuvana whose complaint is the first word of the return to reach Sugriva.
- Shiva and Parvati the two between whom the story is told. Once in this episode the teller himself sinks into love and has to steady his mind to go on.
This side of the sea
As he left Lanka, Hanuman gave a tremendous roar, and the rakshasa women who heard it miscarried. That is the last thing Tulsi records of him there. Then one half line crosses the sea: leaping over the ocean he came to this shore and let the monkeys hear his cry. A shout of joy, the commentary says. Sound comes before story. The company on the shore hears a cry before anyone hears a sentence.
Seeing Hanuman, they all rejoiced, and the monkeys felt they had been born again. The word is weighed against what they had been facing. In the Kishkindhakand, with the term run out and nothing found, Angada told them with tears in his eyes that death had come for them two ways. Here they had found no trace of Sita. And there, if they went back, the king would kill them. A new birth is the right word for a company that had already closed its account with death.
Then the proof, before a word is spoken: his face is glad and a light shines in his body. From these the monkeys understood, the commentary says, that he had done Rama‘s work. Then they all met him and were very happy, like a gasping fish that finds water.
And they set off, glad, toward Rama, asking and telling the news as they went, many new accounts, the commentary says. Every one of them wanted the story from the one who was there.
The Madhuvana stripped
On the way they all came into the Madhuvana, the honey grove. With Angada’s consent they ate its sweet fruit, and honey too, in the commentary’s second reading. When the keepers tried to stop them, fists flew, and at the first blows every keeper ran. This is a company that sat down on a shore expecting to die and lived on roots while it waited. It has just learned the work is done.
Angada’s consent is written into the line. Lakshmana had given him the crown prince’s place before the citizens and the brahmins on the day Sugriva was given the kingdom. With the crown prince’s leave, eating in the king’s grove becomes the company’s feast.
The keepers went and cried out to Sugriva that the crown prince was laying the grove waste. It is a complaint, and the doha gives it as one. Then it gives Sugriva’s hearing of it: hearing, he rejoiced that the monkeys had come back with Rama’s work done. Inside the keepers’ sentence he heard a second one.
Sugriva’s guess
If they had not found news of Sita, could they have eaten the fruit of the Madhuvana? That is Sugriva’s reasoning, and Tulsi sets it inside his mind. He set their term and its penalty himself. A company coming back past its term with nothing found would come quietly and touch nothing of his. This one has eaten his fruit and beaten his keepers. The waste is the evidence. He was still thinking so when the monkeys arrived with their whole company.
They bowed their heads at his feet, and he met every one of them with great love and asked how they were. The answer, which the commentary gives to the monkeys, is one this episode hears twice: by the sight of your feet all is well. And by Rama’s grace the work has been done in full. Then they name the one who did it. “Lord, Hanuman did the work, and he saved the lives of all the monkeys.” They say it for the whole company, and the lives they count are the ones the king’s own term had put a date on. Hearing it, Sugriva embraced Hanuman again, and then set out with all the monkeys for Rama.
The meeting on the crystal rock
When Rama saw the monkeys coming with the work done, a special joy rose in his mind. Tulsi puts the news inside the seeing, before anyone speaks. The two brothers were seated on the crystal rock, the very white rock on Pravarshana hill where the Kishkindhakand left them sitting at their ease. All the monkeys went and fell at their feet.
Then the doha. Rama, whom the verse here calls a heap of compassion, met every one of them with love, embracing them. He asked how they were, before any word about his wife. Their answer is the one they gave Sugriva, given to the monkeys again by the commentary: “Lord, now that we have seen your lotus feet, all is well.” The same answer twice, to the king and to Rama: welfare is the sight of the feet. Of the two deaths Angada counted on the shore, the second was this king, and he has embraced them.
Jambavan’s witness
Jambavan spoke. “Listen, Rama. The one you favor has good fortune always and welfare without a break, and gods, men, and sages are pleased with him. He conquers and he stays humble, he becomes an ocean of virtues, and his fame lights the three worlds.” Hanuman himself has not said a word since they reached the rock. The one speaking is the king of the bears who, on the shore, asked him why he sat silent. He sent him to see Sita and come back with the news.
Then Jambavan brings it down to the company. “By your grace the whole work was done. Today our birth has borne its fruit.” Credit first, fruit second, and the fruit is claimed for all of them.
Then he turns to Hanuman. “Lord, what Hanuman has done, a thousand mouths could not tell.” And having said it could not be told, he told it: he recounted Hanuman’s deeds to Rama.
Rama’s first question to the envoy
Hearing those deeds, Rama was greatly pleased, and in his joy he took Hanuman to his heart again. The first embrace was with the whole company. This one is for the one whose deeds have just been told. Then: “Tell me, dear one: how does Sita live, and how does she guard her life?”
Jambavan has just told the deeds, and what Rama asks the one who did them is how she lives. The second half is the harder: how she guards her life, what is holding her up.
Hanuman has heard this question before, from the other side of the sea. In the grove, when he spoke of going, Sita asked him how she was to keep her life. Now Rama asks him the same thing about her. The two whom the sea divides have put one question to the same monkey.
The name a sentry, the thought of him a door
“Your name stands sentry day and night, and the thought of you is the door. Her eyes are fixed on her own feet. By what road, then, could her life go out?” Tulsi’s word for the eyes is the word for a thing locked, and the commentary says plainly that the eyes are the lock. Sentry, door, and lock make a house with a life shut inside it, and the doha leaves that life no road out.
Hanuman is describing what he saw. Before he spoke a word to her in the grove, Tulsi set down how she sat: eyes on her own feet, mind sunk in Rama’s lotus feet. She was repeating his virtues in her heart while the watches of the night went by. And Hanuman, seeing her, was deeply grieved. The doha he speaks on the rock is that sight turned into an answer. Rama asked how she guards her life, and the answer names the guards: she is kept alive by what she keeps her mind on.
The crest-jewel, and Sita’s words
“As I was leaving, she gave me the crest-jewel.” Rama took it and pressed it to his heart. In the grove, with his tail put out and his hands joined, the envoy had asked her for a token, as Rama had given him one. She took off the crest-jewel and gave it. Now it goes from his hand to Rama’s heart.
Then Hanuman gives what came with it. “Lord, with both her eyes full of water, Sita said some words to me.” From here the voice is the envoy’s and the words are hers. “Take hold of Rama’s feet, and his younger brother’s with them,” and then, as the commentary fills it in, say this: “You are the friend of the humble. You take away the suffering of those who come to you for refuge. In mind, in deed, and in word I am devoted to your feet. For what fault, lord, have I been abandoned?”
Her words begin with a salute, with Lakshmana inside it. Then what he is. Then what she is, devoted in every way a person can be. And only then the question. And the question looks inward. Someone who means to reproach asks why you did this. Sita asks what she did.
The fire of separation
“One fault I own: when we were parted, my life did not go. And yet, lord, that is the offense of my eyes, which stubbornly stand in the way of its leaving.” Having asked what her fault was, she names one herself, and then lays it on her eyes.
Then the picture that explains why her body has not burned. “Separation is the fire, this body is the cotton, and the breath is the wind. The body could burn away in an instant. But the eyes rain water for their own sake, so the body does not get to burn in separation’s fire.” With fire and wind together, the commentary notes, the body could be gone in a moment. The same line says why it is still there: rain on cotton keeps it from catching. The eyes weep for their own good, the commentary says, so that they may see Rama’s form again and be glad. In the doha before, these eyes were the lock on the door. Here they are the rain on the cotton. Two pictures of one keeping, and both end with her alive.
Better left unsaid, kind Lord
“Sita’s calamity is very great, kind Lord. It is better left unsaid.” The envoy stops. The commentary gives his reason: telling it would give Rama great pain. It is spoken by the one person on the rock who saw that calamity: the drawn sword, the rakshasis around her, the plea to a tree for fire. He leaves it out, and says that he is leaving it out.
And he goes straight on to urge him. “Each moment passes for her like a kalpa. Go quickly, Lord. Conquer the host of the wicked by the strength of your arms, and bring her back.” The commentary hears a “therefore”: since her moments pass like ages, go at once. In place of an account of her suffering he gives its measure, the rate at which time passes where she is. Earlier in this kand, seeing her in her distress, one instant passed for the monkey himself like a kalpa. Now he gives that instant to Rama as hers. Of the story of Indra’s son and the month she set, both of which she gave him in the grove, Tulsi records nothing in this report. What Hanuman carries is the speed of her time, and the word go.
Water in Rama’s eyes
Hearing Sita’s grief, Rama’s lotus eyes filled with water, and what he weeps at is the part his envoy chose to tell. Then he speaks, and the commentary marks the words as his: “One whose only refuge, in word, body, and mind, is I: could calamity touch her even in a dream?”
Hanuman takes the sentence one step further. “Lord, calamity is this alone: when there is no remembering of you and no worship. What are the rakshasas worth, Lord? You will conquer the enemy and bring Sita back.” The master said calamity cannot reach the one who takes refuge in him. The servant defines the word: the one calamity is the lapse of remembrance. By that definition, the woman whose life is guarded by Rama’s name stands outside calamity.
“Listen, monkey: no one has done for me what you have”
“Listen, monkey: no one who bears a body, god, man, or sage, has done me such service as you. What return can I make? My mind cannot even come before you.” Jambavan named gods, men, and sages a little earlier as those pleased with the one Rama favors. Rama counts the same three and says none of them has served him like this monkey.
“Listen, son: I cannot be free of my debt to you. I have thought it over in my mind and seen it.” Between one line and the next, monkey has become son. Then Tulsi lets a picture take the place of more speech. Rama, the protector of the gods, looks at the monkey again and again, water in his eyes, his whole body thrilling. The one who protects the gods declares a debt to a monkey that he cannot clear.
Hearing Rama’s words, and seeing his face and his body, glad and thrilling, the commentary says, Hanuman rejoiced. Overcome with love he fell at his feet, crying, “Save me, save me, Lord!” In front of him is his master with water in his eyes, saying the debt can never be cleared. He answers with the cry of a creature in danger.
Love sunk at his feet
Again and again Rama wants to raise him, and Hanuman, sunk in love, has no wish to rise from his feet. Rama’s lotus hand rests on his head. That is where the scene stands when its teller stops. Remembering that state, Shiva was lost in love. He is the one telling this story. The picture of a hand on a bowed head takes him out of the telling. For half a line the story has no voice.
Then, steadying his mind, Shiva went on with the story. What he tells is the raising. Rama lifted Hanuman, took him to his heart, took him by the hand, and seated him very near. Three motions, and each shortens the distance: up from the feet, to the heart, and by the hand to a seat close beside him.
The greatness of a branch-dweller
“Tell me, monkey: Lanka, which Ravana guards, that fort so formidable, how did you burn it?” It is the first time anyone on the rock has asked about the burning. The praise is inside the question, which names the fort’s keeper and strength before it asks. Hanuman knew Rama was pleased, and Tulsi describes his reply before it begins: he spoke words free of pride.
“The whole manliness of a creature of the branches is this: he goes from one branch to another.” Then the deeds, in a single breath. “That I leapt the sea and burned the golden city, killed the bands of night-walkers and laid the grove waste, all of that, Rama, is your might. Lord, there is no greatness of mine in it.” He counts them only to hand every one back.
Then the doha, with a picture turned upside down. “Lord, for the one you favor nothing is hard. By your power, cotton could surely burn the fire that lives under the sea.” The commentary stops on the cotton, a thing that itself burns very quickly, and draws the plain sense: by Rama’s power the impossible can happen.
And it is the same cotton. Earlier on the rock, in the words he carried, cotton was Sita’s body, which the fire of separation could not burn. Here the cotton is the servant, and by Rama’s power it burns the fire under the sea. In both places the rule of fire and cotton is broken.
A bhakti that never wanes
“Lord, in your grace give me your bhakti, which gives such joy, and let it be anapayani, a bhakti that never wanes.” Steady, the commentary says, a devotion that does not move. When Sita blessed him in the grove, Tulsi called his speech steeped in bhakti, might, splendor, and strength. The invocation of this kand bowed to him as Rama’s dear devotee before the story began. What he asks for is what he has shown through the whole kand, with one word added: that it should never wane. That word has been given once before in this story. In the Kishkindhakand, the woman of great austerity whom the search party met in the cave went to Rama, bowed at his feet. Rama gave her a bhakti that never wanes. The monkey who led the way into that cave asks for the same gift by the same name.
Hearing the monkey’s very simple words, Rama said: “So be it.” The verse notes the simplicity, and the answer is a single word. The line ends with Shiva turning to his listener, Parvati, by name.
Then Shiva says something meant for whoever is listening. “Parvati, one who has known Rama’s nature is pleased by worship alone. Nothing else pleases him. And whoever takes this dialogue into his heart gains bhakti to Rama’s feet.” The commentary names the dialogue: the one between master and servant. The exchange just finished on the rock: the question about how she lives, the debt declared and the credit handed back, the boon asked and granted. It is opened by that line to anyone.
Why delay now
Hearing Rama’s words, the hosts of monkeys cried out: “Victory, victory, victory to the merciful one, the root of joy!” Then Rama called Sugriva and said: “Make ready to march. Now for what reason should there be any delay? Give the monkeys the order at once.” With that sentence the episode of news becomes a march.
Above them the gods were watching this play, which the commentary reads as the preparation for Ravana’s death. They rained down flowers in plenty and went home glad. Earlier in this kand the gods stood before Ravana in his court with their hands joined, afraid. Here they rain flowers on the order to march.
The last doha opens the sight the next episodes move with. Sugriva sent the call quickly, and the troop-leaders came in companies, monkeys and bears of many colors, of measureless strength. The episode began with one monkey’s cry heard by a company on a shore, and it ends with an army gathering at a king’s call. The next episode opens with that host bowing at Rama’s feet and roaring.
The thing unsaid
Hanuman gave Rama the measure of Sita’s calamity and kept back its account. He said aloud that he was keeping it back: it was better left unsaid. What would only pain the hearer, as the commentary reads it, the envoy chose to hold. In its place he gave how fast her time was passing.
Then there is the question Rama asked first. The account of Hanuman’s deeds had just been given, and what he asked was how she lives. The answer was a picture of a guarded house. In one doha Rama learned what his wife’s life was resting on, and whose name stood guard over it.
And there is the envoy himself. The one who leapt the sea, burned the city, and saved a whole company’s lives handed it all back in half a line, no greatness of mine in it. When he asked for something, it was the bhakti he already had, that it should never wane. Tulsi sets it all on a rock, where the master looks at the servant again and again. The servant, praised, falls at his feet and asks to be saved.
The same story, elsewhere: Valmiki’s Ramayana, chapter 22: The Burning of Lanka, and the Return.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Sundarkand, doha 28 to 34, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.