‘In this assembly of sages and, above all, at Prayaga, chief of all holy places, it were the most heinous of sins to swear even to the truth. If in such a place one tells a lie, there will be no sin or vileness greater than this.

You are all-wise – I speak in all sincerity – and Raghunatha has access to the inmost secrets of the heart; I am not grieved for what my mother has done, nor pained at heart lest the world deem me base.

I have no dread of the loss of heaven, no sorrow for my father’s death, whose meritorious deeds and fair renown shine forth throughout the universe, who had such sons as Lakshmana and Rama,

- and who dropped his fragile body when separated from Rama. Why should one mourn for such a king? What pains me is that Rama, Lakshmana and Sita are wandering from forest to forest with feet unshod and clad in hermit’s dress.

Wearing deerskins, feeding on wild fruits, reposing on the ground overspread with kusha grass and leaves, and halting beneath trees, they ever endure cold and sunshine and rain and storm!

It is this burning agony that ceaselessly consumes my breast, so that I feel no appetite by day nor sleep at night. For this fell sickness there is no remedy: I have mentally ransacked the whole world.

My mother’s evil design, the root of all this evil, was the carpenter who used my interests as an adze and fashioned out of the evil wood of jealousy a destructive magical contrivance, and muttering the horrible, evil spell of Rama’s banishment for a fixed them (of fourteen years), planted it (in the soil of Ayodhya).