Hinduism 
An Alternative Version
of the Story of Rama and Sita
by Kamesh Aiyer

This version begins at one of the inconsistencies in the sequence of events in Valmiki’s Ramayana, in this case, an inconsistency to do with Rama’s mother Kausalya:

“Kausalya” translates to “daughter of Kosala”. If Kausalya was the daughter of a king of some other kingdom, she would not be called “Kasusalya” – she would be addressed differently. Of course, Kausalya is not her given name, but her given name is never mentioned anywhere. Why would a young prince Dasaratha, who expects to be the king, marry as his first and senior wife a local girl? I know of no such case in other ancient Indian stories.

For instance, in the Mahabharata, Draupadi is called Paanchaali, but never Aindraprasthi, or Hastinaapuri (infelicitous though these names certainly are). Kunti is never called anything other than Kunti.

Another inconsistency, this time to do with Dasaratha’s childlessness:

Dasaratha, we are told, was childless. But this childless king, had many years ago, gifted his daughter Shantha to the unfortunately childless King of Anga. “Hold your horses!”, you might be tempted to exclaim. “Where did you get that story from?”. Well, it is part of Valmiki’s story. As you might know, Shantha marries the sage Rishyashringa, who is invited by Dasaratha to perform the Putrakameshthi yagna so that the childless Dasaratha could have children.

Now for a piece of plot silliness on the part of Valmiki:

Valmiki represents Kausalya as a nervous queen, who has been constantly praying to the gods to ensure that her son become King. Granted, Valmiki says that Kaikeyi was the favorite queen; but, nowhere is there an implication that Dasaratha might plan to hand the kingdom to Bharata. In fact, Kausalya’s nervousness makes no sense. Unless, of course, there was something else going on and Kausalya had reason to be nervous.

The King’s inexplicably collapses when Kaikeyi makes her demands. Granted, Dasaratha is at least 58 years old. But he is not presented as a doddering old king, but somebody who wants to crown his heir apparent. He wasn’t planning to make Rama the King – he was planning to make him Crown Prince. Kaikeyi might have been beautiful, but kings have always had access to beautiful women and Dasaratha had a large number of concubines. So, his weakness in the face of Kaikeyi’s demands is inexplicable. Unless, of course, there was something else going on and the story of collapse has less to it than meets the eye.

To understand what that something else could have been, we should take a peek at the Jain Ramayana in which Rama and Sita are not husband and wife but brother and sister. That would make them both children of Kausalya. But then Sita’s rationale for going to the forest with Rama is meaningless – she is not his wife. The only reason Sita would have had to go into exile with Rama is if the order of exile included her!

Why would Kaikeyi want to exile Sita? In Valmiki’s story, this makes no sense.

There is one explanation that ties these strands together. To understand it, one must understand how royal inheritance works in a matrilineal family. The rulers of Travancore-Cochin are a recent example; more ancient examples include the Pharaohs of Egypt. The matriarch is the “Queen”. Her brother is the “King”. The matriarch may be married (as with the Pharaohs) or may have a visiting consort (as in Travancore). In appears that in some ancient matrilineal tribes and nations, the matriarch had lovers but never married. The Queen’s children inherit the power – her eldest daughter becomes the next matriarch and one of her sons becomes the next King! From a patrilineal perspective, the Kingship goes from the King to his sister’s son.

As an aside, note that the Egyptian Pharaoh legitimized his rule by marrying his half-sister and thus inherited from his father. It appears that the Egyptians found a way to make matrilineal and patrilineal systems work to ensure patriarchy!

So let us make the assumption that Kosala is a matrilineal kingdom. Dasaratha the king is the brother of the Queen. Who could be this Queen, except Kausalya (the “daughter of Kosala”). That explains her name!

It also explains the story of Shantha, another daughter of Kosala, who is married to a sage. There is no puzzle if Shantha is Kausalya and Rishyashringa is her spouse. Valmiki, and any other redactors of the Ramayana, could not comprehend Kausalya being married to Rishyashringa while being Queen of Kosala, so they invented a daughter for Dasaratha who was gifted away. The story of Rishyashringa’s marriage to Shantha is a pretty common fairy tale that has been grafted on to the Ramayana but adds very little narrative meaning to the story.

In Valmiki’s story, Rishyashringa performs the yagna that produces the payasam that makes the Queens pregnant. One can imagine Valmiki struggling with the problem of casting Rishyashringa as being somehow responsible for Rama; he resolves it by making Dasaratha childless, invents a yagna, and payasam that is split between the wives of Dasaratha.

In this version, no yagna is needed. Sita and Rama are Kausalya’s children and therefore should have been the next Queen and King.

Kaikeyi is from Kekaya a kingdom in the far northwest of India. The assumption that I make here is that matrilineal traditions were common in much of India but patriarchy and patrilinearity were coming in from the Northwest along with nomadic settlers. We do not need to call these settlers “Aryans” – they were probably better described as “Shakas” or “Scythians”.

Kaikeyi comes from a patrilineal culture. When Dasaratha wooed her (and the story of her prowess in battle and the chariot is a charming one) and married her, she thought she was marrying the King of Kosala and that her son would be the next King. Dasaratha lets her believe this (or maybe even lies to her) so that she marries him.

When Kaikeyi discovers the truth, she is initially upset, but as time goes by and Kausalya does not have children, she begins to believe that her son could still inherit the kingdom. It is even possible that Bharata was born to her and she encouraged him to act as though he would be crown prince.

Kaikeyi’s behavior explains Kausalya’s nervousness. She probably felt suspicious of Dasaratha’s loyalty to her. As the Queen, she had some powers; but as the leader of the army, Dasaratha could easily get rid of her. After Sita and Rama were born, Kausalya’s nervousness increased.

Dasaratha did not bring matters to a head until it became time to crown Sita as the Queen-elect and Rama as the King-elect. At this point, if Kausalya died, Rama and Sita would inherit and Dasaratha would lose his title and Kaikeyi would lose her position and Bharata would be just another royal hanger-on.

Dasaratha planned a coup that would change the system to patrilinearity, but he must have found that this was not going to fly with the people of Kosala or the army. It is possible that respect for tradition was too strong; it is possible that Dasaratha did not actually control all of the army and that Kausalya had her own forces. In any case, he may have threatened to start a civil war.

With civil war looming, Rama and Sita made a decision to avoid a conflict or civil war for the moment. It is possible that Bharata had taken over operational control of the army from his father. Maybe he had even put his father and Kausalya under house arrest because he was unsure of their commitment to the proposed change, especially if it lead to a civil war. Valmiki describes Rama and Sita as escaping at night and of Bharata following them with a great army. Possibly, Bharata realized that killing Rama and Sita was likely to be more trouble and came to an agreement with them that they must leave for a different part of the world they knew. That would explain their decision to hike to Panchavati – not a short or simple hike by any means.

It is not clear why Bharata would agree to rule in Sita and Rama’s name. But it is possible that the tradition of a matriarch was not something easily abandoned. (Note: Even in ancient Egypt, some Pharaohs married their half-sister to become Pharaoh but did not always have any children with them. Instead they changed the tradition slightly so that any daughter of the Pharaoh and “the Great Queen” could be the next queen). But in any case, it appears that part of the settlement that sent Rama and Sita to exile required Bharata to rule with a pair of sandals as symbolic Regent. Valmiki describes these as Rama’s sandals, but they could as well have been Sita’s footwear.

We know very little about how matriarchies functioned in the ancient world. Some tantalizing clues include a fire ceremony; an annual sacrifice (or maybe every 18 years coinciding with the eclipse cycle) of the consort; bacchanalia (like Holi but less restrained). We don’t know what was entailed in getting a consort for the matriarch. We don’t know what happened when or if the queen went on a trip – was she even allowed to leave, especially if there was any risk that she might be kidnapped. In any case, it must have been unacceptable for her to go and live with her consort – that risked alienating her from her people.

In a ritualistic society (and there is reason to believe that matrilineal societies were as ritualistic as patrilineal ones, or maybe even more so), the queen could well leave some representative object. This is speculation, but Sita’s sandals could easily represent her absence due to a trip.

So why, you might wonder, did Lakshmana go with Rama and Sita. There are some alternatives, not all of which reflect well on his motives. There is no reason to suspect that he was not Dasaratha’s son and Bharata’s brother or half-brother. He may have been sent to ensure that Rama and Sita fulfilled their part of the deal with Bharata, and, in addition, did not conspire with other rulers to come back with an army. (It is also possible that he was attached to Rama, though this seems unlikely).

Lakshmana’s role as a guard puts a very different perspective on his actions in Panchavati. He does not mutilate Surpanakha to prevent her from attacking Sita.—instead, he acts to prevent Rama from forming a liaison with Ravana through Surpanakha.

Ravana does not need to kidnap Sita – she is not Rama’s wife. In the classical matrilineal system, the consort of the Queen visited her in her land. The Queen did not visit her consort. From both the King’s and the people’s standpoint, the Queen’s possible attachment to a foreigner was a risk. Her children could not be raised in a foreign land as that might make them less attached to the land they inherited. So when Sita goes to live with Ravana, she is violating tradition. Possibly Ravana does abduct her because she may not have wanted to go to his home. In any case, Sita living in Lanka is not just a threat to the traditions of Ayodhya and to Bharata’s illegitimate rule there, but also to Rama’s legitimate claim to be king of Ayodhya. Thus, when Sita disappears, both Rama and Lakshmana must find her and get her back, out of Lanka.

As in any good epic, there are elements of fairy-tale and adventure story and even poetry sprinkled throughout the Ramayana. Rama and Lakshmana’s excellent adventure in the woods with Viswamitra is one; the tale of the hero breaking the bow to get the hand of the princess is another. The poetry of Rama and Sita’s life in Panchavati and Rama’s deep sorrow and despair as he wanders through the forest looking for Sita is another. These episodes are exciting, fun, beautiful, and so on, but they do not need to be explicated – they are poetic license.

Rama and Lakshmana make an alliance with Sugreeva of the Kishkindhans. But before doing this, Rama kills Vali the king of Kishkindha. The reason for this is hinted in what Vali’s wife Tara does after Vali dies – she marries Sugreeva who arranged to kill him. We are told that in an earlier episode, when Vali had disappeared, Sugreeva had made himself king and taken Tara as his wife. Once you realize that the Kishkindha tribe is also matrilineal, the changes that Valmiki made to a story that he did not fully understand is clear.

Tara is the matriarch/Queen and both Vali and Sugreeva are her brothers. Vali is tyrannical and arrogant and Rama realizes that Vali probably wanted to emulate Dasaratha and abandon the matrilineal system. Rama needed help not just to get Sita back out of the control of Ravana but also to return to Ayodhya. He needed an ally who would see the justice of his claim to the throne of Ayodhya and not interpret that right as a rebuke to Vali’s own ambitions to establish patrilinearity among the Kishkindhans.

Sugreeva, on the other hand, is presented as a less ambitious king, one more inclined to follow the traditional model. Thus, Rama judges him more likely to support Rama’s claim and not be threatened by it. That is why Rama kills Vali. The mechanics of the killing (from hiding and so on) do not matter – they make for good drama and a good adventure, but simply obscure the point of the killing.

Rama with his army confronts Ravana and demands the release of Sita. Ravana does not see the point – he sees that Ayodhya has become patrilineal. There is no longer any reason to demand that the Queen never travel. Sita may have been the Queen-elect, but she isn’t one anymore. He refuses to let Sita go. Rama needs Sita to legitimize his claim to being King of Ayodhya and the longer she stays with a consort, the more compromised she will appear.

The resulting standoff results in a war in which Ravana dies. Note how Vibhishana, his brother, becomes king of Lanka – Lanka is also matrilineal! Inexplicably, Valmiki does not make Mandodari marry Vibhishana; however, he simply drops the ball leaving it to us to speculate.

When Rama gets Sita out of Lanka, he makes her perform the fire ceremony. This is represented by Valmiki as a demand that she prove her “innocence”. However, the few hints we have about the fire ceremony in ancient matriarchies is that it was an annual ritual that re-established the right of the Queen and Queen-elect. As usual, sleight-of-hand (magic, if you will) ensured that the Queen survived the ordeal. There are a number of places in Indian myth where the fire ritual is described – Holika, for instance, might have died in one such.

At this point, I must point out that this is not a happy ending for Sita – her consort Ravana has been killed. In Valmiki’s story, she had to resist Ravana because she was Rama’s wife. In this version, there is no reason to resist Ravana as a lover or as a consort, but to the extent that Sita had not given up her desire to return to Ayodhya as Queen, she could not accept is offer to stay with him. Once Ravana is dead, returning as Queen-elect remains the only viable option for her and she has to swallow her pain.

Having defeated Ravana and established an alliance with Kishkindha and Lanka, Rama and Sita return to Ayodhya. Lakshmana had not expected that Ravana would be killed and that Rama would emerge as the head of a strong alliance, and so Lakshmana switches sides. Lakshmana’s goals had been much more limited to getting Sita back. Faced with a stronger force, Bharata is also forced to abandon his claims to power. Valmiki has Kausalya still alive at this point, but she must have died as Sita and Rama are crowned as Queen and King (and not husband and wife).

The relationship between Rama and Sita continued to be tense – he was, after all, the killer of her consort/lover Ravana. It is possible that Sita resisted liaisons with any future consorts; it is also possible that Rama did not trust her and did not allow her to have any more consorts. It is also possible that Rama developed Dasaratha’s disease and wanted his own children, Lava and Kusha, to inherit.

In a matrilineal system, if the Queen does not have daughters, her sister’s children are next in line. Sita’s sisters are Urmila, Mandvi, and Shrutikirti, and are usually represented as married to Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrugna. The Ramayana does not name any daughters in the next generation and Lava and Kusha appear to be the only males. It is not clear what the truth might have been.

Rama’s fears about Sita and desire to ensure that Kosala passed on to his sons lead him to exile Sita – he asks Lakshmana to abandon her in the forest. Valmiki uses this exile to create a frame story for the self-referential recitation of the Ramayana for the first time by Lava and Kusha at Rama’s Ashwamedha yagna. The frame story is artifice and we may assume that Sita perishes in the forest. Valmiki represents this as Sita returning to her mother the Earth when confronted with a demand for another fire ceremony.

Some loose ends – undoubtedly there are many more:

What about Janaka, Sita’s father in Valmiki’s story? My speculation is that he is Kausalya’s consort after Rishyashringa disappears. That makes Rama half-brother to Sita – the Egyptians would not have looked askance at their being married, but I do not know about the ancient Indians, so I do not assume that they were ever married to each other. Actually, in the Egyptian model, both parties would have the same father (the previous Pharaoh) while Rama and Sita have the same mother. Genetically, this makes no difference, but I don’t know that they were considered the same. Janaka’s plowing is one of the traditional functions of a consort of the matriarch – his discovery of Sita in the furrow of the plough is a metaphorical description of his role as consort of the matriarch and father of her daughter.

What about Jatayu, Kumbhakarna, Hanuman, and so on. I think that these episodes were splendid leaps of imagination on the part of the poet. Not to mention Hanuman’s multiple leaps across the Palk Straits.

What about Rishyashringa? He does not reappear in the story. He does not need to because he played out his role as consort of Kausalya. However, there is another possible significance to his name, that I think explains why Rama is such a revered piece of Indian mythology. That is the subject for another article.  

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