have
been abandoned on account of what the people say, and not for any evil
that I have done. The husband is the God of the wife, the husband is her
lord and guide; and what seems good unto him she should do even at the
cost of her life."

Sita is honourably received by the saint Valmiki himself, and the holy
women of the hermitage are charged to entertain and serve her. In this
calm retreat she gives birth to two boys who receive the names of Kusa and
Lava. They are carefully brought up and are taught by Valmiki himself to
recite the Ramayan. The years pass by: and Rama at length determines to
celebrate the Asvamedha or Sacrifice of the Steed. Valmiki, with his two
young pupils, attends the ceremony, and the unknown princes recite before
the delighted father the poem which recounts his deeds. Rama inquires into
their history and recognizes them as his sons. Sita is invited to return
and solemnly affirm her innocence before the great assembly.

"But Sita's heart was too full; this second ordeal was beyond even her
power to submit to, and the poet rose above the ordinary Hindu level of
women when he ventured to paint her conscious purity as rebelling:
'Beholding all the spectators, and clothed in red garments, Sita clasping
her hands and bending low her face, spoke thus in a voice choked with
tears: "as I, even in mind, have never thought of any other than Rama, so
may Madhavi the goddess of Earth, grant me a hiding-place." As Sita made
this oath, lo! a marvel appeared. Suddenly cleaving the earth, a divine
throne of marvellous beauty rose up, borne by resplendent dragons on their
heads: and seated on it, the goddess of Earth, raising Sita with her arm,
said to her, "Welcome to thee!" and placed her by her side. And as the
queen, seated on the throne, slowly descended to Hades, a continuous
shower of flowers fell down from heaven on her head.'(1035)"

"Both the great Hindu epics thus end in disappointment and sorrow. In the
_Mahabharata_ the five victorious brothers abandon the hardly won throne
to die one by one in a forlorn pilgrimage to the Himalaya; and in the same
way Rama only regains his wife, after all his toils, to lose her. It is
the same in the later Homeric cycle--the heroes of the _Iliad_ perish by
ill-fated deaths. And even Ulysses, after his return to Ithaca, sets sail
again to Thesprotia, and finally falls by the hand of his own son. But in
India and Greece alike this is an afterthought of a self-conscio