Sunday, March 20, 2016

Sita is not the only virtuous woman!

 Sita is not the only virtuous woman!
Rama was a person who took the Eka-pathini-virata, vow of marrying only one wife. On the contrary, his enemy Ravana was a sensuous Rakshasa who ran a harem of thousand women. To be virtuous and faithful to a husband who is equally virtuous and faithful to the wife may be normal and easy of practice, but to be devoted, obedient and faithful to a husband who was fond of many women, and was running after other men’s wives, needed patience, forbearance and virtue of a higher order. These things, Ravana’s wife, Mandodari, possessed in abundance, and her memory is still kept alive in the Hindu classics.
In her purity of heart, Mandodari saw that Rama was no mere man. After Ravana was killed in battle, she hurried to the spot where his body lay, and lamented as follows:
“Alas! You who had vanquished the gods have met with death by human hands. But I do not believe Rama to be a mere man. It is clear that the Supreme Being, greater than the great, invincible Vishnu of true valour, has taken human form for the goods of the world. I implored you to make peace with Peace. You never listened and you have now reaped that fruit of your actions. Death comes to everyone in some form and to you it came in that of Sita. The curses of the virtuous wives whom you have violated have come true; truly it is said that the tears of a chaste woman do not fall in vain.”
After lamenting thus, the spirit of Mandodari left her body as if on its ways to the heavens in search of the spirit of her husband which was already separated from its body by Rama’s deadly missile, the Brahmastra.

 (This is a part of the excerpts of the speech of Mr. Ramachandra, the highly esteemed Editor of the internationally famous ‘Religious Digest’, who delivered this speech to sixty four Roman Catholic Nuns, belonging to different Orders, at the Aquinas University College, Colombo in 1971.)

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