Page:Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists.djvu/71

 for Rama's safe return. To Shyama Slta also prayed, saluting him with folded hands: "O great tree, I bow to thee. May my lord's vow be all fulfilled, and we again behold Kaushalya and Sumitra." Then as they went along the forest path, Sita, seeing trees and flowers unknown, asked Rama many questions, as of their names and virtues; and Lakshman brought her flowers and fruits to pleasure her; and the rippling streams, and the cries of cranes and peacocks, and the sight of elephants and monkeys delighted her.

On the second day they reached the Chitrakuta mountain, where was the hermitage of Valmiki. Greeted by that rishi, Rama told him all that had befallen. Then Laksh- man fetched divers sorts of wood, and those brothers built a goodly house with doors and thatched with leaves. Then Lakshman slew a deer and cooked it, and Rama made ritual offerings to the divinities of that very place, and after communion with the deities he entered the well- wrought thatched house with Slta and Lakshman, and they rejoiced with happy hearts and cast off grieving for Ayodhya.

Dasharathds Grief and Death

Meanwhile Ayodhya was a place of grief and mourning, without comfort for king or people. On the fifth day of Rama's exile, just when Kaushalya for a moment yielded to her sorrow and reproached her lord, there came into Dasharatha s mind a recollection of a sin committed in a past life by means of an arrow-finding-its-mark-by-sound —which sin now bore the fruit of exile and death. Remembering this sin, he told Kaushalya the same night how it had been committed:

"I was then so skilled a bowman as to earn the name of 47