The Ramayana · 263 of 493

Araṇya Kānda (The Forest Book): Canto 69 — The Death of Jatáyus

As Ráma viewed with heart-felt pain The vulture whom the fiend had slain, In words with tender love impressed His brother chief he thus addressed:

“This royal bird with faithful thought For my advantage strove and fought. Slain by the fiend in mortal strife For me he yields his noble life. See, Lakshmaṇ, how his wounds have bled; His struggling breath will soon have fled. Faint is his voice, and near to die, He scarce can lift his trembling eye. Jaṭáyus, if thou still can speak, Give, give the answer that I seek. The fate of ravished Sítá tell, And how thy mournful chance befell. Say why the giant stole my dame: What have I done that he could blame? What fault in me has Rávaṇ seen That he should rob me of my queen? How looked the lady’s moon-bright cheek? What were the words she found to speak? His strength, his might, his deeds declare: And tell the form he loves to wear. To all my questions make reply: Where does the giant’s dwelling lie?”

The noble bird his glances bent On Ráma as he made lament, And in low accents faint and weak With anguish thus began to speak: “Fierce Rávaṇ, king of giant race, Stole Sítá from thy dwelling-place. He calls his magic art to aid With wind and cloud and gloomy shade. When in the fight my power was spent My wearied wings he cleft and rent. Then round the dame his arms he threw, And to the southern region flew. O Raghu’s son, I gasp for breath, My swimming sight is dim in death. E’en now before my vision pass Bright trees of gold with hair of grass, The hour the impious robber chose Brings on the thief a flood of woes. The giant in his haste forgot ’Twas Vinda’s hour,(513) or heeded not. Those robbed at such a time obtain Their plundered store and wealth again. He, like a fish that takes the bait, In briefest time shall meet his fate. Now be thy troubled heart controlled And for thy lady’s loss consoled, For thou wilt slay the fiend in fight And with thy dame have new delight.”

With senses clear, though sorely tried, The royal vulture thus replied, While as he sank beneath his pain Forth rushed the tide of blood again. “Him,(514) brother of the Lord of Gold, Viśravas’ self begot of old.” Thus spoke the bird, and stained with gore Resigned the breath that came no more.

“Speak, speak again!” thus Ráma cried, With reverent palm to palm applied, But from the frame the spirit fled And to the skiey regions sped. The breath of life had passed away. Stretched on the ground the body lay.

When Ráma saw the vulture lie, Huge as a hill, with darksome eye, With many a poignant woe distressed His brother chief he thus addressed: “Amid these haunted shades content Full many a year this bird has spent. His life in home of giants passed, In Daṇḍak wood he dies at last. The years in lengthened course have fled Untroubled o’er the vulture’s head, And now he lies in death, for none The stern decrees of Fate may shun. See, Lakshmaṇ, how the vulture fell While for my sake he battled well. And strove to free with onset bold My Sítá from the giant’s hold. Supreme amid the vulture kind His ancient rule the bird resigned, And conquered in the fruitless strife Gave for my sake his noble life. O Lakshmaṇ, many a time we see Great souls who keep the law’s decree, With whom the weak sure refuge find, In creatures of inferior kind. The loss of her, my darling queen, Strikes with a pang less fiercely keen Than now this slaughtered bird to see Who nobly fought and died for me. As Daśaratha, good and great, Was glorious in his high estate, Honoured by all, to all endeared, So was this royal bird revered. Bring fuel for the funeral rite: These hands the solemn fire shall light And on the burning pyre shall lay The bird who died for me to-day. Now on the gathered wood shall lie The lord of all the birds that fly, And I will burn with honours due My champion whom the giant slew. O royal bird of noblest heart, Graced with all funeral rites depart To bright celestial seats above, Rewarded for thy faithful love. Dwell in thy happy home with those Whose constant fires of worship rose. Live blest amid the unyielding brave, And those who land in largess gave.”

Sore grief upon his bosom weighed As on the pyre the bird he laid, And bade the kindled flame ascend To burn the body of his friend. Then with his brother by his side The hero to the forest hied. There many a stately deer he slew, The flesh around the bird to strew. The venison into balls he made, And on fair grass before him laid. Then that the parted soul might rise And find free passage to the skies, Each solemn word and text he said Which Bráhmans utter o’er the dead. Then hastening went the princely pair To bright Godávarí, and there Libations of the stream they poured In honour of the vulture lord, With solemn ritual to the slain, As scripture’s holy texts ordain. Thus offerings to the bird they gave And bathed their bodies in the wave.

Insight · 2

Rāma performs Jaṭāyu's funeral rites. He builds the pyre. He kills game and offers the flesh in funerary balls of rice. He recites the Brahmanical mantras for the dead. He does for a bird what a son does for a father. This is one of the load-bearing moments of the whole epic for the modern animal-ethics tradition. The medieval Hindu commentator Vedānta Deśika in the fourteenth century read this scene as proof that the avatāra's compassion makes no caste or species distinction in the moment of death. Modern Hindu writers on ahiṃsā, including Gandhi, treated it as the corollary of the Bhagavata vision in which Kṛṣṇa loves the cows.Vedānta Deśika, Pādukā-sahasra, on Rāma's compassion; M. K. Gandhi, From Yeravda Mandir (1932), on animals; Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (1994); Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (1977), on the dignity of animal lives.

The cross-tradition reach of this scene is wider than one might first think. Saint Francis is the obvious Christian parallel, but the deeper echo is in the medieval Celtic Christianity of the Welsh and Irish saints, who buried their hounds and their wild creatures with the rites of the church and who counted certain animals as members of the monastic community. Andrew Linzey in his modern Animal Theology builds his case for a Christian animal-ethics largely out of this Celtic stream and out of texts like Job 12 where Job says, ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee. The Rāmāyaṇa is staging the same claim in epic form.Job 12:7-9; on Celtic Christian animal-saints: Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (1997); Linzey, Animal Theology; on Saint Francis: Bonaventure, Legenda Maior, ch. on creatures.

The vulture monarch having wrought A hard and glorious feat, Honoured by Ráma sage in thought, Soared to his blissful seat. The brothers, when each rite was paid To him of birds supreme, Their hearts with new-found comfort stayed, And turned them from the stream. Like sovereigns of celestial race Within the wood they came, Each pondering the means to trace, The captor of the dame.