It also tells the poignant later events: how, troubled by public doubt over her time in Lanka, Sita withdraws to the hermitage of the sage Valmiki, where she raises Rama’s sons Lava and Kusha; and how at last she returns to the embrace of the Earth from which she came. The book closes the great epic with Rama’s own departure from the world. (Many scholars regard the Uttara Kanda as a later addition to Valmiki’s original poem.)

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The story of the Uttara Kanda

The Uttara Kanda (“Book of the Aftermath”) tells of the years after Rama’s coronation — a book of poignancy and depth. Though Sita is pure, whispered doubts among the people lead Rama, as king, to send her away; she takes refuge in the hermitage of the sage Valmiki, where she bears Rama’s twin sons, Lava and Kusha.

There the boys grow up and learn the Ramayana itself from Valmiki, singing it back to their father when they meet. In the end Sita, calling upon her mother the Earth to bear witness to her purity, returns to the earth from which she came, and Rama in time completes his divine mission and departs the world.