Ramayana

It's always irritating when something comes out that you've got some work in somewhere. You haunt every online forum that might conceivably mention it, looking for a reference to your bit in it, and mentally stick pins into people who spend ten pages of forum posts discussing one minor statistical point.

I realise that it's hardly the best thing to do, but it's extremely difficult not to do.

Almost the weekend. What a nice thought.

This translation of the Ramayana that I've got hold of is absolutely beautiful. I think the author's also done one of the Mahabarata. I must see about looking for it.

---

The fire caught and blazed. Sita made a pradakshina around her cold husband. She folded her hands to him and approached the flames.

She folded her hands to the agni, and said in a ringing voice, "If it is true that I have never for a moment been untrue to Rama in thought or deed, protect me, ancient Agni, witness of the world. Rama says I am tainted. If the sun, the moon, the wind, and my mother, the Earth, know I am pure, let these flames not burn me. Let the world know Sita is sinless."

Completely beautiful, she walked grimly around the fire, another flame herself. Then without a trace of fear or a backward glance, she walked into it. A gasp arose from the vanaras, and Lakshmana cried out. The flames were twice as tall as the slight, exquisite Sita; in the shocked silence, she stood at their white heart. She was the color of her golden ornaments, and the screams of the rakshasi women of Lanka filled the air.

In the sky, the Devas and gandharvas saw her, molten, in Agni's burning clasp. She was like a Goddess cast into hell by a curse. The ones of light, the witnesses of the ages, had never seen anything like this before. Though his eyes were now full of tears and his mind full of anguish, Rama did not stir. He stood staring at the ground.

-- Ramayana, translated by Ramesh Menon