“A son is born his sire to free · From Put’s infernal pains”

The expression “A son is born his sire to free / From Put’s infernal pains” condenses a religious justification for seeking sons into a memorable couplet: a son is valued not only as an heir, but as a means of release for his father. The surrounding passage connects that claim to prayer, scriptural learning, and the continuance of a royal line.

Wording and wordplay

The couplet makes its claim through the name Put, the infernal pains from which the father is to be freed, and the related term Puttra, which the passage presents as the name gained by the son who saves his father. The explanation turns a kinship role into a spiritual one: the son's birth is framed as an answer to the father's fate beyond death.

The lines are part of a longer passage about the desire for sons. Immediately afterward, the poem says that sons are sought by prayer and associates them with training in Scripture and fine qualities. The couplet therefore joins religious hope to expectations of family continuity and moral formation, rather than treating birth alone as sufficient.

Place in the poem

The passage attributes the recitation of this teaching to Gayá, described as a renowned saint, and associates it with a holy town of the same name. This attribution gives the saying the form of inherited religious instruction, rather than presenting it merely as an isolated maxim.

Elsewhere, the poem links sons with the preservation of a royal line: a prophecy promises the Monarch four sons who will uphold it. The couplet's emphasis on a son's duty to his father thus resonates with the poem's broader concern for succession, though the two passages make distinct claims—one about lineage, the other about release from Put's pains.

Filial duty and its limits

The saying casts father and son in a reciprocal frame: the father is the one exposed to infernal suffering, while the son is named as his deliverer. Elsewhere, the poem makes a father's anguish over Ráma's lot a cause for dramatic concern, and it gives Ráma high praise for truth. Those episodes place familial bonds and duties within the poem's moral world, but they do not repeat the couplet's specific claim about Put.

As an expression, the couplet is significant for how directly it links sonship with the father's posthumous welfare. Its force comes from compression: a theological promise, a kinship obligation, and the hope of continuity are gathered into two lines, while the surrounding verses supply the context of prayer and religious instruction.