Sītā

Summary

Sītā is the wife of Rāma and the heroine of the Rāmāyaṇa, the epic ascribed to the poet Vālmīki. Her name in Sanskrit means "furrow", the line a ploughshare cuts in the ground. Her father Janaka, king of Mithilā, tells how he was ploughing a field to consecrate it for a sacrifice when a baby girl rose from the furrow; he named her Sītā and raised her as his own, calling her "not born from a womb", and he set strength as her bride-price: only the man who could string the bow of Śiva kept in his house would marry her. The kings came and none could lift it; Rāma lifted it, drew the string, and the bow broke in the middle with a sound like thunder, and Janaka gave him Sītā.

When Rāma was exiled to the forest for fourteen years she went with him. There Rāvaṇa, king of Laṅkā, carried her off through the air while she called to Rāma and his brother Lakṣmaṇa and asked the mountains, rivers and birds to carry the news, and the vulture Jaṭāyu fought the abductor until he fell. Rāmāyaṇa 3.49. In Laṅkā she refused Rāvaṇa, and when Hanumān brought Rāma's ring and offered to carry her away on his back, she declined and asked that Rāma come himself.

When Rāma had killed Rāvaṇa and she was brought to him, he said before the army that he had fought to wipe out the insult to himself, that he doubted her because she had lived in another man's house, and that she might go where she wished. Sītā wept and said: my heart was with you; over my body, in another's power, I had no control. Then she asked Lakṣmaṇa to build her a fire, called on the fire to guard her if she was true, and entered it. Agni, the fire, came up carrying her in his arms, her robe and flowers unburnt, gave her back to Rāma and said: there is no sin in her.

In the seventh book, the Uttarakāṇḍa, the doubt returns: Rāma sends her, pregnant, to the forest because of what the people say, and in Vālmīki's hermitage she bears two sons, Kuśa and Lava, whom he teaches the epic. Years later Rāma calls her to swear her innocence before the assembly, and she says: as I have never thought of any but Rāma, even in my mind, so may the Earth grant me a hiding-place. The earth splits, a throne borne by serpents rises with the goddess of Earth on it, who takes her in her arm, seats her beside her and goes down with her.

The idea her story turns on is that the woman who came out of the earth goes back into it. She is born from the furrow without a womb, tried by fire and saved, then refuses the second trial and returns to the mother who brought her forth. Between the coming out and the going back she stands by her own decisions: she refuses Rāvaṇa, refuses to be carried off in secret, chooses the fire, and then chooses the earth.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, a reading proposed on the method, since the project's Hindu essay mentions Sītā only as Rāvaṇa's captive and does not read her name. Without its feminine ending, Sītā leaves s and t. The t belongs to the dental group and answers Arabic ṭ, so we read saṭr. In Lane saṭr is a line of writing and a row of trees or palms, and the same root gives "he cut him with the sword". The furrow is a line the ploughshare writes in the ground and a row in which the crop is set. The Arabic r has no counterpart in the name; the Juthoor table records r dropping in part of its correspondences.

Linguistic Root

Monier-Williams gives sītā as a furrow, says the Furrow is invoked in Ṛgveda 4.57.6 as presiding over agriculture and the fruits of the earth, that in the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā four furrows are drawn while the verses addressed to her are recited, and that in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa Sītā is called Sāvitrī. He adds that she was named Sītā because she was fabled to have sprung from a furrow made by Janaka while ploughing for a sacrifice to obtain offspring.

The Arabic reading saṭr counts s and t: s as s, and t as ṭ, since Juthoor puts t and ṭ in one merger group. Lane gives three senses: a line of writing, a row of trees and palms, and cutting with the sword. A furrow is line, row and cut in the earth together. The r is extra in Arabic, and the Juthoor table records r dropping in part of its correspondences, so the reading takes the nucleus s-ṭ. The limit that keeps it open: in his first edition Monier-Williams derives the name "probably" from si, "to bind", as in sīman, "boundary", which would make the t a participial suffix and leave only the s of the root.

Key Mythic Narratives

Sītā and Lakṣmī

The Viṣṇu Purāṇa says that Lakṣmī accompanies Viṣṇu in each form he takes, being Sītā when he is Rāma, as told under the avatar cycle. Viṣṇu Purāṇa 1.9, Wilson's translation. Monier-Williams notes that some accounts make her an incarnation of Lakṣmī, others of Umā, and one makes her Vedavatī in an earlier age.

The bow and the bride-price

Janaka set no price to be paid for his daughter, but a test: "strength is her bride-price". The kings who came for her failed at the bow and in anger besieged Mithilā for a whole year. So the breaking of the bow in Rāma's hands settled a quarrel among kings, and was more than a show of strength.

Symbolic Reading

Sītā's story holds the whole picture of the crop: she comes out of the furrow when the earth is opened, is carried off to a distant land, comes back, and at last goes down into the earth. The Ṛgveda addresses the furrow itself as Sītā, asking her to "come near", bless and bring fruit in plenty, so the name belonged to the ploughed earth before it belonged to the queen.

The story also holds a picture of judgment: the king tests his wife twice because of "what the people say", the fire testifies for her, and then she refuses to be tested again. The story asks who judges a woman: the husband, the community, or the fire and the earth.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Among the Greeks Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of grain and harvest, is carried off to the house of Hades beneath the earth; her mother searches for her until the crops wither, and she returns for two-thirds of the year. Sītā, daughter of the furrow, is carried off to Laṅkā beyond the sea and comes back, and then goes down into the earth for good. Both are the story of a girl of the sown earth seized by the king of another world.

Helen is taken from her husband's house to Troy beyond the sea; the Greeks cross to her with an army and besiege the city, and she returns to her husband. Sītā is taken to Laṅkā; Rāma crosses the sea with the allied army and kills the abductor. In both stories the carrying-off of the queen causes a war across the sea.

Sītā's coming out of the earth and going back into it is a form of the descent to the underworld, though she goes down not to return; and in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa she bears the name of Sāvitrī, the woman who follows Yama and wins back her husband.