Prohibition on Taking One’s Younger Brother’s Wife

The Prohibition on Taking One’s Younger Brother’s Wife is treated as a binding moral and customary rule, not merely a private grievance. When Ráma explains why he killed Báli, he identifies Báli’s seizure of his brother’s wife as a grave offence: it violates ancient right, rejects duty, and warrants the penalty of death.

The Rule and Its Violation

Ráma frames Báli’s conduct as more than a dispute between brothers. Báli had taken his brother’s wedded wife, and Ráma presents this appropriation as a transgression of established custom. The rule protects the younger brother’s marriage from being overridden by the elder brother’s power; in this account, kinship does not excuse the offence but makes the breach central to the judgment.

Punishment and Royal Authority

Ráma connects the violation directly to its consequence. He says that those who commit such an offence must be checked, and that the law decrees death for people who sin in this way. He also invokes his Kshatriya birth to explain why he cannot forgive the offence: punishment is represented as an obligation of his role, rather than a personal act of vengeance alone.

The judgment is set within a larger political order. Ráma states that Bharat rules with sovereign authority and that he and others obey Bharat’s royal word. The passage therefore grounds enforcement both in the stated law and in the king’s authority, presenting Báli’s punishment as the application of public justice to a violation within the family.

Place in the Narrative

The rule supplies Ráma’s explicit justification for killing Báli. It shifts the explanation from the circumstances of the brothers’ conflict to the conduct Ráma identifies as the decisive offence: taking a brother’s wife. The passage presents that conduct as an affront to custom and duty serious enough to warrant death, while making clear that Ráma’s authority to punish is understood within Bharat’s sovereignty.