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Saturday, June 11, 2011

110 Why did rAmA kill another deer without rushing to his hermitage?



Book 3 - Book of Forests
Chapter 60 - Sarga 60
Verses 6 and 7 - SlOkAs 6 and 7


rudantam iva vrukshaih ca glaana pushpa mruga dvijam
shriyaa vihiinam vidhvastam sa.ntyakta vana daivataih.

viprakiirn`a ajina kusham vipraviddha bruisii kat`am
drusht`vaa s`uunya ut`aja sthaanam vilalaapa punah punah.

Context
Rama killed the demon Maricha who came in the disguise of a bewitching golden deer. The demon died while crying and shouting 'Ha Lakshana!, Sita!'. Rama hunted another deer and
started back towards their cottage. He found Sita missing, on reaching the cottage. Poet Valmiki describes the flora and founa grieving for Sita.



Approximate Gist
Trees were weeping, with flowers withering.
Deer were weeping.
Birds were weeping.
They were looking charmless. They were shattered. They were miserable as though abandoned by the Goddess of the Forest.
Grass-seats and mats in the cottage were looking battered.
Seeing the disturbed and empty cottage, longing to Sita, Rama wept again and again.



BLOGGER's (my) COMMENTS:
The slain deer on the shoulder of Rama did not weep, because Rama disabled its capacity to weep. Rama should have learnt to empathise. The separated male/female partner of the deer hunted by Rama, how it would have wept? Do joys and sorrows exist for flora and fauna, only if human lovers are separated? The poet Valmiki did not have such feelings of empathy because he gave a feast to Sage Vasishta by killing the calf Kalyani Kapila (name of the black calf in his Ashram).


The agonising paradox of Valmiki Ramayana is : Valmiki gets his motivation to start writing poetry and writing Ramayana, when he sees a hunter killing a krauncha bird and the surviving female bird wailing for her partner. Thus the trigger for Ramayana started in violence. Its protagonist Ramayana indulged in violence. Yet the objects of nature weep for him, when a demon abducts his wife.

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