Rama then points out the spots in Southern India where he and Sita had dwelt in exile, and the pious hermitages which they had visited; later, the holy spot where the Jumna River joins the Ganges; finally, their distant home, unseen for fourteen years, and the well-known river, from which spray-laden breezes come to them like cool, welcoming hands.  When they draw near, Prince Bharata comes forth to welcome them, and the happy procession approaches the capital city.

Fourteenth canto.  Sita is put away.—­The exiles are welcomed by Queen Kausalya and Queen Sumitra with a joy tinged with deep melancholy.  After the long-deferred anointing of Rama as king, comes the triumphal entry into the ancestral capital, where Rama begins his virtuous reign with his beloved queen most happily; for the very hardships endured in the forest turn into pleasures when remembered in the palace.  To crown the king’s joy, Sita becomes pregnant, and expresses a wish to visit the forest again.  At this point, where an ordinary story would end, comes the great tragedy, the tremendous test of Rama’s character.  The people begin to murmur about the queen, believing that she could not have preserved her purity in the giant’s palace.  Rama knows that she is innocent, but he also knows that he cannot be a good king while the people feel as they do; and after a pitiful struggle, he decides to put away his beloved wife.  He bids his brother Lakshmana take her to the forest, in accordance with her request, but to leave her there at the hermitage of the sage Valmiki.  When this is done, and Sita hears the terrible future from Lakshmana, she cries: 

  Take reverent greeting to the queens, my mothers,
    And say to each with honour due her worth: 
  “My child is your son’s child, and not another’s;
    Oh, pray for him, before he comes to birth.”

  And tell the king from me:  “You saw the matter,
    How I was guiltless proved in fire divine;
  Will you desert me for mere idle chatter? 
    Are such things done in Raghu’s royal line?

  Ah no!  I cannot think you fickle-minded,
    For you were always very kind to me;
  Fate’s thunderclap by which my eyes are blinded
    Rewards my old, forgotten sins, I see.

  Oh, I could curse my life and quickly end it,
    For it is useless, lived from you apart,
  But that I bear within, and must defend it,
    Your life, your child and mine, beneath my heart.

  When he is born, I’ll scorn my queenly station,
    Gaze on the sun, and live a hell on earth,
  That I may know no pain of separation
    From you, my husband, in another birth.

  My king!  Eternal duty bids you never
    Forget a hermit who for sorrow faints;
  Though I am exiled from your bed for ever,
    I claim the care you owe to all the saints.”

So she accepts her fate with meek courage.  But

  When Rama’s brother left her there to languish
    And bore to them she loved her final word,
  She loosed her throat in an excess of anguish
    And screamed as madly as a frightened bird.