Ramayana — Ayodhya Kanda, Sarga 114, Shloka 16
अयोध्याप्रवेशः
Bharata Enters Ayodhya and Perceives the City’s Desolation
विपुलां विततां चैव युक्तपाशां तरस्विनाम्। भूमौ बाणैर्विनिष्कृत्तां पतितां ज्यामिवायुधात्।।2.114.16।।
vipulāṃ vitatāṃ caiva yuktapāśāṃ tarasvinām | bhūmau bāṇair viniṣkṛttāṃ patitāṃ jyām ivāyudhāt || 2.114.16 ||
It lay on the ground like a bowstring cut loose from a weapon—broad and stretched, fitted with its fastening-loops, yet severed by arrows and fallen down.
FAQs
The image of something ‘severed’ and fallen suggests the rupture of rightful order; dharma is portrayed as a sustaining tension (like a bowstring) whose loss collapses the city’s vitality.
Ayodhya is being depicted through a sequence of similes as emptied and broken in spirit after Rama’s banishment.
Rama’s centrality to civic well-being is implied; the city’s fall mirrors the absence of the dharmic exemplar.