- is present now in bodily form before my eyes. What purpose, Lord, will my body serve when there is nothing more to desire?’ With his eyes full of tears Raghunatha replied, ‘It is your own meritorious deeds, friend, that have brought you salvation.

There is nothing in the world beyond the reach of those who have others’ interests to heart. Casting off your body, friend, ascent now to my realm. What more shall I give you, when you have all you desire?

But on reaching there, friend, say nothing to my father about Sita’s abduction. If I am no other than Rama (if I am what I am), the Ten-headed himself and all his house will come and tell him of it.

Dropping his vulture body, he put on Hari’s own form, bedecked with many jewels and clad in a yellow attire of matchless splendour, and possessed of a dark-hued body and four long arms; and with his eyes full of tears he chanted this hymn of praise:

Glory to Rama of incomparable beauty, who is impersonal and personal, the true master of all modes of material nature! His fierce arrows are potent enough to shatter the mighty arms of the Ten-headed! I unceasingly worship the all-merciful Rama, the ornament of the earth, who is endowed with a form dark as the rain-burdened cloud, whose face is like the blue lotus, whose large eyes resemble the red lotus. Possessed of long arms, he rids his devotees of the dread of birth and death!

Him I ever worship who is of immeasurable might, beginningless and unborn, unmanifest, (situated as) one, beyond perception, Govinda (the object of all pleasures for the cows and for the senses), who transcends all senses and destroys the duality of opposites (such as happiness and distress), the sum of mystic wisdom, the supporter of the earth and a delight to the souls of countless saints and servants who repeat the spell of Rama’s name; I ever reverence Rama, the adorer of the desireless, the vanquisher of Lust and his brood.

He whom the Vedas hymns as pure (free from the taint of delusion), the Absolute, all-pervading passionless and unborn; he to whom the sages attain by meditation, knowledge dispassion and unswerving discipline (yoga), that fountain of mercy has become manifest as the very incarnation of beauty and enraptures all creation, animate and inanimate. He is the bee that dwells in the lotus of my heart and in his limbs glows the splendour of many of a god of love.