A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"502 THE RAMAYANA.a few years passed in happiness, when the people againThis Sita was outside of India ;fehebegan to murmur ;was stolen away by a demon. We did not see he test ofSita. Sita must give another test or else she must bebanished." And the people insisted that Sita must bebanished, and Sita was Vanished . She was made to go andlive in the forest with the same sage, a poet, and thereRama s two children were born, the twins. And the poetnever told the twins who they were ;and brought tnern upand he then composed the poem, set it to music anddramatised it. The drama was a very holy thing ; in India,it is never looked down upon ;drama and music are bythemselves religion ; any song, love songs or any song,never mind ;if one s whole soul is in that song, he attainssalvaticTfr, just by that ; nothing else he has to do ;if aman s whole soul is in that, his soul gets salvation. Theysay it leads to the same goal.So, this Yalmiki, he dramatised the life of Rama and;he taught his two children to act their parts, and so on.And then there came a time when Rama was going tohave a huge sacrifice the old kings use to perform. But noceremony in India can be performed by an unmarried man,he must have a wife the co-religionist. That is thetranslation of the Sanskrit word for wife. Hundreds ofceremonies the Hindu has to perform,and not one canbe performedif he has not a wife. (You see the prieststie them up together and they go round temples andmake very great pilgrimages tied together.)And Rama was without wife ;Sita had been banished.Then the people asked him to marry again and for the;first time in his life, Rama stood against the people.He said,"This cannot be ;this life is Sita s ;and sotheymade a golden statue of Sita, in order that the