Rishyashringa lured from the forest

Classical

The sage who made Rama possible had never seen a woman before the courtesans came.

Dasharatha is sitting privately with his minister and charioteer Sumantra when Sumantra says he wants to tell an old story he has heard. It concerns a prophecy about the king's own sons, and it is told in the voice of the sage Sanatkumara, who once spoke of it to other sages.

The hero is Rishyashringa, whose name refers to the horn he was born with on his head. His father is the sage Vibhandaka, son of Kashyapa. The boy grows up in the forest, raised apart from other people, and knows no one but his father, to whom he is devoted. He is celibate, and the Brahmins praise him for it. He spends his days tending the sacred fire and serving his father.

Meanwhile, in the kingdom of Anga, a strong and valiant king named Romapada commits a violation of righteousness, and a terrible famine follows that threatens every living thing. Distressed, he summons learned Brahmins and asks how to put it right. They tell him: bring Vibhandaka's son Rishyashringa to Anga, and give him your daughter Shanta in marriage, following proper form.

Romapada is worried about how to do it. He consults his ministers and decides to send priests and ministers to fetch the young sage. But the envoys are afraid, because they fear Vibhandaka's anger, and they hesitate. After thinking, they come up with a plan that will bring Rishyashringa without giving offense. The plan is to use courtesans to draw him away. It works. Rishyashringa is brought to Anga, rain falls, and Shanta is given to him in marriage.

The translator's note adds that Shanta was in fact Dasharatha's daughter, adopted by Romapada, which makes Rishyashringa a son-in-law to both kings.

Sumantra closes the tale with Sanatkumara's final words: Rishyashringa, as the king's son-in-law, will give Dasharatha sons if he is invited to Ayodhya. Dasharatha is delighted and asks Sumantra how exactly the sage was brought to Anga, which sets up the next chapter. (That chapter was not read for this retelling, so the details of the luring are not given here.)

This is the story that sets up the entire beginning of the Ramayana's plot. The son who will become the epic's hero is born through a ritual, and the ritual needs a priest. Dasharatha does not know where to find one until his minister tells him a story about a famine, a king who needed rain, and a young man who knew no one but his father.

The story also gives a picture of how Valmiki thinks about the moral order. A king who goes against righteousness causes a drought across the land; a sage's purity, brought into the city, brings rain. That is the logic that works on Anga, and it is the same logic that makes Dasharatha ask for Rishyashringa's help with his own childlessness.

The translator's note on this page adds that the arrival of Dasharatha's sons is not an ordinary birth, because Rama's coming as an incarnation of Vishnu was foretold.

Who: Rishyashringa, Vibhandaka, Romapada, Shanta, Dasharatha

Bound to

Horse-sacrifice, divine dessert, and the births causes

Places: Anga

Where this comes from

valmiki · Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda (valmikiramayan.net translation) sarga 9
read for this telling · valmikiramayan.net Valmiki Ramayana Bala Kanda sarga 9

See it on the tree · All stories

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