The citizens follow Ráma and return to Ayodhyá in a scene of separation shaped by two forms of care: the people’s devotion draws them after their exiled prince, while Ráma’s concern for his subjects leads him to slip away unseen. At the Tamasa River, their attachment becomes a burden he cannot allow them to carry into the forest with him. Their return to Ayodhyá gives the departure a second, sorrowful movement: Ráma continues toward exile, while the people retrace their steps without him.

Causes and Background

As Ráma sets out from Ayodhyá with Sítá and Lakshmaṇ, the citizens follow. The poem presents their pursuit as an expression of tender love: they are drawn to follow the prince, not ordered to accompany him. His departure is already bound to filial duty, but the people’s response makes its public cost visible. The exile is not only a separation within the royal family; it draws the city’s inhabitants onto the road behind Ráma.

Ráma recognizes that the crowd’s loyalty may turn into further suffering. He fears that if he remains in the forest while they stay with him, Daśaratha’s heart will suffer over the people as well as over his son. His concern thus reaches in two directions: he must honor his father’s command, but he also considers the pain his continued presence on the road may cause both his father and his subjects.

The Departure at the Tamasa River

At the Tamasa River, the travelers stop for the night, and the people lie down around Ráma. Once they are asleep, he looks upon the sleeping crowd and tells Lakshmaṇ that they should leave while the people remain unconscious. The decision is deliberate: rather than openly ask the citizens to turn back, Ráma uses the quiet of the night to continue the journey without them.

He and Lakshmaṇ set out by chariot with Sítá. The choice transforms the sleeping crowd into the scene’s sharpest image of separation: the citizens have followed as far as they can, yet the very rest that briefly gathers them near Ráma enables him to go on alone with his companions. Their affection is not rejected; it is the reason he tries to spare them a forest life they did not have to undertake.

Ráma’s Duty Toward His Subjects

Ráma explains his decision as part of a prince’s responsibility. A ruler should heal the troubles his people bring upon themselves through devotion, he reasons, not let them share his own hardship. His departure in secret is therefore more than a practical escape from a persistent crowd. It expresses a model of care in which the ruler accepts his own exile but refuses to make loyal subjects bear its consequences beside him.

That principle gives the episode its moral tension. The citizens’ conduct is an act of loyalty, but Ráma does not treat loyalty as permission to expose them to needless hardship. He does not change his course or abandon the exile; instead, he separates himself from the people so that they may return home. In this way, obedience to the command that sends him away coexists with attention to the welfare of those who follow.

The Citizens’ Return

When morning comes, the people wake and find that Ráma is gone. They search for him but find no trace, and their loss becomes immediate and collective: they are left bereft of the wise prince they had followed. Their return is not a willing reversal of their loyalty but the consequence of having no way to continue after he has slipped beyond their reach.

With weary hearts, grief, and shame, they take the road back and reach Ayodhyá. The journey thus divides into two paths: Ráma continues toward the hermit-haunted forest with Sítá and Lakshmaṇ, while the citizens return to the city he has left. The episode makes that separation a measure of his character and of his bond with the people. Their devotion draws them after him; his concern sends them home.