Valmiki Ramayana 2.77.16: Ayodhya Kanda, Sarga 77, Shloka 16
और्ध्वदैहिकक्रिया-शोकविलापः
Obsequies for Daśaratha and the Brothers’ Lament
Spoken by BharataSetting: Ayodhyā
अवदारणकाले तु पृथिवी नावदीर्यते ॥१६॥
या विहीना त्वया राज्ञा धर्मज्ञेन महात्मना ।
avadāraṇakāle tu pṛthivī nāvadīryate ||16||
yā vihīnā tvayā rājñā dharmajñena mahātmanā |
Gdy powinna rozpaść się na dwoje, ziemia nie pęka, choć jest pozbawiona ciebie, o królu, wielkiego duchem i znającego dharmę.
Sandhi Notes
- nāvadīryate = na + avadīryate (a+a contraction)
You are a righteous and mighty king and without you, this earth would have been broken into pieces. But it does not.
The teaching
A righteous ruler is conceived as the earth’s support; when he is gone, the mind expects the cosmos to mirror inner rupture—yet dharma demands steadiness despite the world’s indifferent continuity.
Duties in tension
- Accepting reality of the king’s death vs. yearning for cosmic justice/visible signs
- Maintaining composure as prince vs. overwhelming grief
- Ethical theme
- Rāja-dharma / śoka and restraint
- How it resolves
- Lament leading toward renunciation/penance impulse
For your practice
Contemplation on impermanence and the need for inner steadiness when outer signs do not validate grief.
Mood and themes
- Rasa
- Karuna (compassion), with Adbhuta (wonder)
- Mood
- Astonished-grief, cosmic, accusatory
Themes
- Dharma
- Grief
- Kingship
- Satya
- Itihasa
- Ethics
The world’s stability is read as dependent on dharma; lament implies perceived rupture between outer order and inner truth—an invitation to seek the unshaken (akṣara) beyond change.
Kaṭha Upaniṣad’s contrast of the perishable world and the imperishable; the ‘earth not splitting’ underscores the stubborn continuity of saṃsāra despite personal catastrophe.
Imagined cosmic event: earth expected to split (pṛthivī-vidāraṇa) but does not
- Bharata and Dasharatha
- Son lamenting father-king’s absence (grieving-reverential)
- Dasharatha and Prthivi
- King as dharmic support of earth; earth expected to react to adharma/void (accusatory-lamenting)
- Bharata and Prthivi
- Lament addressed to earth as witness (bewildered)
Mahābhārata, Strī-parvan laments where nature is asked why it does not break; Rāmacaritamānasa, Ayodhyākāṇḍa (Ayodhyā’s lament and cosmic imagery after Daśaratha’s death)
Purāṇic trope: nature reacts to the fall of dharma
Ayodhyākāṇḍa 2.74–2.76 (Bharata’s grief and condemnation of the situation)
Anuṣṭup (śloka)
Grieving
Kampita on ‘pṛthivī’ and ‘vihīnā’ to convey tremor/unsplitting irony
FAQs
The verse upholds the ideal of a dharma-knowing king whose presence stabilizes the world; moral order is imagined as tied to righteous rule.
Bharata mourns Daśaratha, expressing that even nature should have shattered at the loss of such a righteous king.
Daśaratha’s dharma-jñāna and greatness of soul, presented as the foundation of social and cosmic stability.
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