Sita's banishment turns the public judgment that Ráma once resisted into the force that separates him from Sítá. He knows her to be pure in thought, word, and deed, yet cannot bear the shame and mockery stirred by slander in Ayodhyá. The exile sends Sítá, unsuspecting and pregnant, to the very hermitage she had long wished to visit; its aftermath brings her sons before their father, but does not restore her to his household.

Causes and Decision

The account sets the banishment after Ráma and Sítá have returned to Ayodhyá and settled together. In spring, as the winter ends, they sit in the shade of the Aśoka trees. Sítá tells Ráma that she longs to visit the holy hermitages on the banks of the Ganges, venerate the ascetics, and spend even a single day among them. Ráma readily promises that she will go. What appears to be a welcome journey thus becomes the means by which he carries out a decision she does not know he has made.

The cause is rumor, not any change in Ráma's judgment of his wife. People condemn him for taking Sítá back after her long captivity in Rávaṇ's palace. The narrative explicitly distinguishes their accusation from Ráma's own knowledge: he believes Sítá spotless in thought, word, and deed, and knows her love for him to be complete. Nevertheless, he cannot endure the public shame and resolves to abandon her. The episode's central conflict lies in that split between private conviction and public response: the account gives no indication that Ráma doubts Sítá, but his recognition of her innocence does not prevent the separation.

The Abandonment at the Hermitage

Ráma orders Lakshmaṇ to take Sítá to the hermitage she wishes to visit and leave her there. The instruction carries a finality beyond a temporary visit: Ráma intends never to see her again. Lakshmaṇ must carry out the painful order, and it is he who tells Sítá what has happened once they reach the hermitage. The place she had imagined as a destination of devotion becomes the site of her abandonment.

Sítá faints on hearing the news. When she recovers, she weeps over what she understands as a cruel and undeserved fate. The account does not leave her defined by that first collapse: she resolves to live for Ráma's sake and for the child she carries. Through Lakshmaṇ, she sends Ráma a composed message. She says she grieves not for herself, since she has been abandoned because of what people say rather than for any wrongdoing of her own; she also affirms the wife's duty to follow what her husband considers right, even at the cost of her life. Her message makes the unequal terms of the episode plain: she maintains her devotion even as Ráma's decision removes her from his protection and household.

The Hermitage and the Sons

Válmíki receives Sítá honorably, and the holy women of the hermitage are charged to care for her. There, away from the court that judged her, she gives birth to twin boys, Kuśa and Lava. Válmíki brings them up and teaches them to recite the Rámáyaṇ. Their education makes the poem itself the means by which the abandoned family will become known to Ráma: what begins as a household rupture eventually returns to the royal gathering as a song about the father's own deeds.

Years pass before Ráma celebrates the Aśvamedha, the horse sacrifice. Válmíki attends with his two young pupils, whose parentage is not known to those gathered. The boys recite the poem before the delighted Ráma. He asks about their history and recognizes them as his sons. Their appearance changes what Ráma knows about his family, but recognition does not itself undo Sítá's banishment. Instead, she is invited to return and affirm her innocence before the assembly, making a public declaration the price of rejoining the household from which public opinion had driven her.

Sítá's Final Departure

Sítá cannot bring herself to submit to a second ordeal before the spectators. The account presents this refusal as a response to the limit of what she can bear, not as an admission of guilt. Clothed in red, she clasps her hands, bows her face, and swears that even in thought she has never loved anyone other than Ráma, calling on the goddess of Earth to grant her a place of refuge. The oath turns the question of her purity away from the crowd's judgment and toward the Earth, who can receive her when the human household has not.

The Earth opens, and a splendid throne borne by dragons rises. The goddess of Earth lifts Sítá onto it, welcomes her, and descends with her as flowers fall from heaven. Sítá's story therefore ends not with a return to Ráma but with her departure from the human assembly that had demanded proof again. The sequence sets two public scenes against one another: first the rumors that prompt Ráma to abandon a wife he knows to be pure, then the gathering before which Sítá refuses another test and is taken away by the Earth goddess. The sons remain the link between the separated parents, but the final act belongs to Sítá.