Ayodhya, Rama’s capital, is the royal center in which the Ramayana’s apparent triumph is both achieved and unsettled. The city receives Rama and his rescued queen after the war and witnesses his consecration and coronation; in the supplementary Uttarakāṇḍa, however, public slander leads him to abandon the blameless Sita, and the capital’s people ultimately follow him to the Sarayu as he leaves the world. Ayodhya thus frames a story of return whose promised happiness is shadowed by the costs of kingship and brought to a cosmic close.

Royal Center and Epic Ending

The poem’s sixth book ends with Rama’s victorious return to Ayodhya with Sita and his consecration and coronation in the capital of his forefathers. In the account’s framing, that conclusion is already a complete epic ending: Rama has recovered his queen, returned to his inherited seat, and taken up the kingship. The closing promise of a glorious and happy reign, together with blessings for those who hear or read the poem, makes the city the destination of the central heroic journey as well as the setting for its royal resolution.

The Uttarakāṇḍa changes the meaning of that resolution without removing it. Its editor describes the Last Book as an appendix or supplement containing events before and after those in the original poem, and judges its account of Rama’s happy reign to be the work of a later hand. Indian scholars, by contrast, are said to ascribe the book to Válmíki and accept it as part of the Ramayana. In either understanding, Ayodhya acquires two narrative identities: the capital where the main epic can end in restoration, and the royal household from which later events reopen the story.

The Capital and Sita’s Abandonment

The supplementary narrative first presents domestic happiness in the aftermath of exile and war. With winter past and spring arrived, Rama and Sita sit together beneath the shade of the Ashoka trees. Sita is soon to become a mother, and Rama invites her to name a wish he can grant. She asks to visit the holy hermitages on the banks of the Ganges, where ascetics live on roots and berries and practice austerities. Rama agrees to the visit. The episode places an ordinary, affectionate exchange beside the royal responsibilities that will soon overturn it.

Ayodhya’s public voice then intrudes into the marriage. Rama hears that people reproach him for taking back a wife who had been held captive in Ravana’s palace. Although he knows Sita’s purity in thought, word, and deed, he cannot bear the mockery and shame attached to the gossip. He decides to abandon her, and orders Lakshmaṇ to take her to the hermitage she had wished to visit and leave her there. The journey converts a promised visit into an act of separation: Sita does not know the purpose of the trip until Lakshmaṇ tells her at the hermitage.

Sita faints when she learns what has happened. On recovering, she weeps over the undeserved cruelty of her fate, yet resolves to live for Rama and her unborn son. Through Lakshmaṇ she sends Rama a message that she grieves not for herself, since she has been abandoned because of what people say rather than any wrongdoing of hers. Her response exposes the human cost of the city’s judgment: the queen’s acknowledged innocence does not protect her from the consequences of public suspicion. Ayodhya’s reputation and its people’s talk reach beyond its walls and determine who can remain within the royal household.

The City’s Final Procession

Ayodhya becomes the point of departure again at the close of Rama’s earthly career. Time arrives at the palace in the form of an ascetic, bearing a message from Brahmá. He requires a private audience and warns that anyone who witnesses it must lose his life. Rama entrusts the palace entrance to Lakshmaṇ and keeps the meeting private. When the sage Durvásas arrives demanding immediate access, Lakshmaṇ enters to report the demand, knowingly accepting the consequence of interrupting the interview. After Durvásas has received the food he sought and departed, Rama faces the conflict between the condition imposed by Time and his brother’s life. Lakshmaṇ urges Rama not to grieve and not to break his promise; the counsellors agree. Rama abandons Lakshmaṇ, who goes to the Sarayu and is carried bodily to heaven by Indra.

Rama then intends to install Bharata as his successor and retire to the forest, but Bharata refuses the succession and chooses to accompany his brother. Messengers summon Śatrughna, who makes the same choice. The inhabitants of Ayodhya also declare that they will follow Rama wherever he goes. He sets out from the capital in a formal great-departure procession, accompanied by his brothers, the people, household attendants, Brahmins bearing the sacred fire, and even animals. The account presents the departure as a public movement out of the city, not a solitary royal retirement: Ayodhya’s people choose to leave with their king.

From Royal Capital to Sacred Threshold

The procession reaches the banks of the Sarayu, where Brahmá appears with the gods and celestial cars. Rama enters the river, and Brahmá addresses him as Vishṇu, calling him back to his own divine being. Rama enters Vishṇu’s glory with his body and his followers. He also asks that the people who accompanied him out of devotion be given a dwelling, and Brahmá appoints them a celestial residence. The city’s final significance therefore lies not only in its coronations or royal decisions. It is the point from which a human community follows its king toward a divine destination, and from which the epic’s political world yields to a sacred ending.