 Rama - The man and the avatar
An emperor in tears
Our first meeting with Dasaratha shows him wearing a worried countenance, at the very opening scene of the epic. The emperor is aged and is worried because he remains issueless. And then when the children are born and the poet moves on to the first important milestone in the poetry – the arrival of Viswamitra – we find him worried, troubled at heart, pleading with the sage, in tears. And for the third time, when the happy couple return from Mithila, we see the terror of Kshatriyas, Parasurama, entering the stage. Once again, we see Dasaratha in tears, begging to spare his young and inexperienced son, and falls down in a swoon. He is not even conscious enough to witness the boy handling the exterminator of twenty-one generations of kings, with ease.
And the final scene in which Dasaratha appears. This is a pretty long scene, throughout which we see the poor old king shedding bitter tears, begging with Kaikeyi, begging with almost everyone – which includes Rama (in Valmiki) – to prevent Rama from going on exile. And the emperor dies on hearing that Rama did not return, when the Chief of Ministers, and the charioteer in this instance – Sumantara, comes back, leaving Rama by the banks of the river Ganges. The emperor was hoping against hopes that Rama would return with
Sumantara.
He would frantically try to get up; flounder; and would look at the door, as the sound of the chariot is heard.
‘varadhan vandhanan!’ he would heave. ‘Here comes my Rama,’ his trembling lips would utter weakly, collecting all the energy left in him. Vasistha moves away from the scene saying,
‘allal kaaNgilEn,’ I am unable to stand witness to this excruciating moment any more. And the emperor drops dead when Sumantara informs him that the trio has left for the jungles and would not be back for fourteen years. This is according to Kamban. This picture slightly differs from that of Valmiki. Nonetheless, it is not any the better for Dasaratha even in the narration of
Valmiki.
With the exception of the occasion of the birth of Rama, and his wedding, we are not able to see this emperor with a smile anywhere else. Whenever we see him, we see him begging, pleading, wailing, bemoaning, cursing himself, cursing Kaikeyi. And he dies when we cross about half the length of Ayodhya Kanda. Of course, we are going to see his appearance again in his ethereal form in the Yuddha Kanda, at the end of Agni Pravesa. We are going to hear his saner counsel and the conversation between the father and the son. That’s a totally different issue. However, this is the picture of Dasaratha that we get from the epic. An old king, tired, tattered, tormented and tossed about like a ship in the stormy sea.
It is not confined to the Ramayana. Even when we look at him through the eyes of the Azwars, we do not see him in a happy mood.
‘thada varaith thOL dhayaradhan thaan pulambiya ap pulambal,’ is how the eleventh quartet of Kulasekara (vanthALiNai) sums up the essence of the other ten. ‘The laments of Emperor Dasaratha, the man whose shoulders could be likened to the very hills.’ And, therefore, he is not visualised once in a happy mood! Whenever you think of him, the first picture that comes to the mind is the way he is given unto worries, tears and wails. Nothing else.
‘Has he been always like this?’ one is left to wonder. A great emperor born in the lineage of Ikswäku; and the descendant of Puranjaya – who is known as Indravaha and Kakutstha as well – one who was born in the line of Nimi, Sagara – by whose name the oceans are known by the name
‘sägara’ – Mandhätä, Raghu and countless other emperors who have left their powerful and indelible impress on the shores of the endless ocean of Time, cannot be this weak!
We do get a real bright picture of the emperor, here and there, in the epic. But not much. We have to go to Shrimad Bhagavata Maha Purana for a genealogy of the celebrated Ikswäku clan. Interestingly, Nimi, the first of Janakas, was the son of the very same Ikswäku.
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