“Taught by thyself, from wrong abstain”

“Taught by thyself, from wrong abstain” is the ethical center of Sítá’s rebuke to Rávaṇ when she rejects his plea. It asks him to use his own capacity for pain as a measure of how he should treat others: what would wound him if done to him is a wrong he must not inflict. In the surrounding lines, Sítá makes that principle specific to his conduct toward other men’s wives, then warns that his lawless desire threatens both him and his line.

The Maxim in Its Scene

The expression occurs as part of Sítá’s direct answer to Rávaṇ. She turns her back on the king and spurns his prayer before urging him to turn away from sin and follow virtue. Her refusal is therefore not merely a rejection of his request. She addresses the conduct behind it, placing his desire within a moral judgment that he can understand through his own experience.

The verse moves from broad instruction to concrete application. Sítá first calls on Rávaṇ to seek virtue; she then tells him to honor other men’s wives and protect them as he would protect his own. The maxim follows as the reasoning that supports that demand. It makes the standard reciprocal: Rávaṇ is not asked to accept an unfamiliar rule, but to recognize in another person the vulnerability he would recognize in himself.

How Reciprocity Does Its Work

The phrase “Taught by thyself” gives the appeal its distinctive force. The self is presented as a source of instruction: a person’s own response to being wronged can teach him what he should refrain from doing to someone else. The next line completes the test, identifying the relevant harm as one that, if inflicted on Rávaṇ, would pain his heart. The measure is emotional as well as ethical; imagined injury makes the other person’s claim legible to the person who might violate it.

The surrounding command gives this general principle a precise object. Sítá does not leave “wrong” undefined in the scene: she has just called for honor and protection toward other men’s wives. The maxim thus binds an abstract prohibition to a particular relationship and act. Its logic is not that Rávaṇ should behave well only when a rule is enforced, but that he should recognize the wrong by reversing the positions and considering what he himself would suffer.

Rebuke and Warning

Sítá’s words place responsibility on Rávaṇ even as she refuses him. The passage presents a possible change of course—turn from sin and walk in virtue—while making clear that his present desire violates the standard she has stated. The appeal draws its authority from the contrast between what he is urged to do and what he is doing: protect others from the injury he would not wish for himself.

The warning that follows raises the stakes beyond the immediate encounter. Sítá says that Rávaṇ’s lawless love will ruin him and all his line. In this sequence, the maxim is therefore connected to a stated consequence: wrongdoing is not represented as a private matter with effects limited to the person who commits it. His conduct puts his own future and his line at risk. The ethical appeal and the warning work together, first offering a standard by which he could restrain himself, then naming the ruin that may follow if he does not.

Form and Significance

The verse’s movement is compact and deliberate: turn from sin, follow virtue, honor and protect others’ wives, and abstain from conduct that would cause the same pain if reversed. That progression makes the maxim more than a free-standing piece of advice. It serves as the hinge between a specific prohibition and the personal reasoning used to persuade Rávaṇ to observe it.

Its force in the scene also comes from who speaks and to whom. Sítá, whom Rávaṇ is addressing with his plea, answers by setting the terms of the moral judgment rather than accepting his framing. She identifies his conduct as wrong, provides a test for recognizing that wrong, and warns of its consequences. The expression distills that rebuttal into a portable principle: another person’s injury can be judged by imagining oneself in the same position. Here, however, it remains firmly tied to the scene’s concrete demand that Rávaṇ honor and protect women rather than pursue his unlawful desire.