exiles are welcomed by
Queen Kausalya and Queen Sumitra with a joy tinged with deep
melancholy. After the long-deferred anointing of Rama as king, comes
the triumphal entry into the ancestral capital, where Rama begins his
virtuous reign with his beloved queen most happily; for the very
hardships endured in the forest turn into pleasures when remembered in
the palace. To crown the king's joy, Sita becomes pregnant, and
expresses a wish to visit the forest again. At this point, where an
ordinary story would end, comes the great tragedy, the tremendous test
of Rama's character. The people begin to murmur about the queen,
believing that she could not have preserved her purity in the giant's
palace. Rama knows that she is innocent, but he also knows that he
cannot be a good king while the people feel as they do; and after a
pitiful struggle, he decides to put away his beloved wife. He bids his
brother Lakshmana take her to the forest, in accordance with her
request, but to leave her there at the hermitage of the sage Valmiki.
When this is done, and Sita hears the terrible future from Lakshmana,
she cries:

Take reverent greeting to the queens, my mothers,
And say to each with honour due her worth:
"My child is your son's child, and not another's;
Oh, pray for him, before he comes to birth."

And tell the king from me: "You saw the matter,
How I was guiltless proved in fire divine;
Will you desert me for mere idle chatter?
Are such things done in Raghu's royal line?

Ah no! I cannot think you fickle-minded,
For you were always very kind to me;
Fate's thunderclap by which my eyes are blinded
Rewards my old, forgotten sins, I see.

Oh, I could curse my life and quickly end it,
For it is useless, lived from you apart,
But that I bear within, and must defend it,
Your life, your child and mine, beneath my heart.

When he is born, I'll scorn my queenly station,
Gaze on the sun, and live a hell on earth,
That I may know no pain of separation
From you, my husband, in another birth.

My king! Eternal duty bids you never
Forget a hermit who for sorrow faints;
Though I am exiled from your bed for ever,
I claim the care you owe to all the saints."

So she accepts her fate with meek courage. But

When Rama's brother left her there to languish
And bore to them she loved her final word,
She loosed her throat in an excess of anguish
And scr