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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