Sita is banished by Rama

Sítá’s banishment by Ráma turns a private marriage into a public judgment: although Ráma knows her to be spotless in thought, word, and deed, he abandons her because the people of Ayodhyá mock his decision to take back a wife held captive by Rávaṇ. The episode moves from the promise of a spring visit to the hermitages on the Ganges to an unannounced separation, then to the birth and recognition of Sítá’s sons and her final refusal of another public ordeal.

Rumor and the decision

The episode begins in a season of apparent happiness. Winter has passed, spring has arrived, and Ráma and the pregnant Sítá sit together beneath the Aśoka trees. Their closeness is compared to that of Indra and Śachí enjoying the gods’ nectar in Paradise. Ráma asks whether she has a wish he can grant. Sítá asks to visit the holy hermitages along the Ganges, where ascetics live on roots and berries and perform austerities; even a single day among them would fulfill her chief desire. Ráma agrees, leaving her with the expectation that the journey is a gift rather than a pretext for separation.

That domestic exchange is set against a harsher public atmosphere. Slanderous talk has spread in Ayodhyá: people condemn Ráma for receiving Sítá again after her long captivity in Rávaṇ’s palace. The account distinguishes this accusation from Ráma’s own knowledge. He knows her purity and her love for him, but cannot endure the mockery and shame. Public reproach therefore overrides what he privately knows, and he resolves to abandon his unsuspecting wife. The contrast makes the decision neither a discovery of wrongdoing nor a response to evidence against Sítá; it is a response to what the people say.

The journey becomes an abandonment

Ráma calls Lakshmaṇ aside and orders him to take Sítá to the forest hermitage she had wished to visit, tell her what has happened, and leave her there. Lakshmaṇ is described as knowing no will but Ráma’s, and the order makes him the agent of a separation he does not choose. The journey initially appears to Sítá to be the promised visit: she smiles at the glad news and trusts that she is being taken to the grove. The movement toward a place she desired thus carries two opposing meanings for the brothers and for Sítá.

At the hermitage, Lakshmaṇ tells her the truth. Sítá faints; when she recovers, she weeps and grieves over a fate she regards as cruel and undeserved. Yet the account does not end her response in collapse. She resolves to live for Ráma’s sake and for their unborn child, and sends him a message through Lakshmaṇ. She says that she has been abandoned because of public talk, not because she has done wrong. She also frames her conduct through the wifely duty she accepts: a husband is his wife’s guide, and she should do what seems good to him even at the cost of her life. Her message preserves both her claim to innocence and her submission to the authority that has wronged her.

Refuge, motherhood, and recognition

Válmíki receives Sítá honorably and entrusts the women of the hermitage with her care. In this retreat she gives birth to two boys, Kuśa and Lava. Válmíki raises and teaches them, including instruction in reciting the Rámáyaṇ. The children grow up away from their father, while the poem they learn carries the story of Ráma’s own deeds back into his hearing.

Years pass before Ráma decides to perform the Aśvamedha, the horse sacrifice. Válmíki attends with his two young pupils, who recite the poem before an audience delighted by their performance. Ráma asks about their history and recognizes them as his sons. The recognition changes the shape of the separation: Sítá’s children, raised in the hermitage after her abandonment, are no longer unknown boys but Ráma’s acknowledged offspring. Ráma invites Sítá to return and affirm her innocence before the assembled people.

The second ordeal and its ending

The invitation requires Sítá to face public judgment again. The account identifies this as a second ordeal, following her earlier vindication, and presents the assembly as the setting in which she is asked once more to establish her innocence. This time she cannot submit to the demand. Before the spectators, dressed in red, she clasps her hands, lowers her face, and swears that in her mind she has thought of no one but Ráma. She calls upon Mádhaví, the goddess of Earth, to grant her a place of refuge.

The oath is answered by a marvel: the earth opens, and a splendid throne borne by radiant dragons rises from it. The Earth goddess lifts Sítá onto the throne, welcomes her, and carries her down as flowers fall continuously. The episode therefore ends not with Sítá returning to Ráma, but with her departure from the human assembly that has demanded proof of a purity he already knew. Her banishment began when public opinion displaced private knowledge; her final exit makes that cost irreversible. Between the two partings, the birth and recognition of Kuśa and Lava carry Ráma’s family story forward, but do not undo what was done to their mother.