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4 Sita’s Powers This song, translated from Kannada, comes from a three-part collection of folk stories from Ramkatha where each part focuses on one aspect of Sita’s experiences : her birth, her marriage, and the tests of her fidelity to Rama. The editors of the collection inform us that they transcribed the song translated below, focusing on Sita’s tests, in 1972 from a performance by Honnajamma, a woman then approximately forty-five years old. The song belongs to a vast repertoire of women’s expressive traditions that construct and imagine the detail of everyday life of women, detail that is often missing from Sanskrit epic narrative. Ringing of experience and wisdom, such folksongs are mostly sung by older women. The village of Ankanahalli, to which Honnajamma belongs, is part of Mysore District in Karnataka state. At the base of the Nilgiri mountains, this region is characterized by hilly tracts. The song’s references to paddy and the images of water—indeed the rural ambience—reflect the traditional farming occupation of the Vokkaliga jati to which Honnajamma belongs.1 The song shows Sita undergoing a series of trials before the climactic fire test (agnipariksha), with each trial demonstrating her quintessential purity and the powers she derives by virtue of that purity. The analogies Rama makes to unfading jasmine, unsullied silk, untainted vermillion, and unwilting leaves are shown immediately to be realized on Sita’s own body. She wears jasmine and silk, is adorned with auspicious vermillion and turmeric, and holds a tender leaf at the moment when she prepares herself for the flames. As the last lines suggest, her purity extends far beyond the usual units of measurement. Still, Rama does not accept Sita’s “truth” and the refrain “Do you accept my truth?” becomes ironic, revealing the incongruity of the tests to which Sita is subjected. The further irony is that the late Dasharatha (who says “Accept my word as truth, Son”) has to vouch for Sita, who has succeeded in performing all the difficult tasks that Rama sets for her in the first half of this song. Sita’s appeal to Dasharatha plays on the well-known theme of Rama’s unquestioning devotion to his father, whose word Rama has always accepted as “truth.” The song highlights ironies in the male-authored tellings about Rama, making these ironies available to those who hear this song of Sita. 1.Almost all the Vokkaligas in Mandya, Mysore, and Hassan districts of Karnataka are Gangadikara Vokkaligas, whose name derives from their ancestral origins, believed to be in the land of the Ganga kings of Mysore. According to the Mysore Gazetteer, they worship Shiva, Vishnu, and many village deities (Hayavadana Rao 1927: 243–244). Ankanahalli is part of K. R. Nagar Taluk in Mysore District. 56 Sita in Context The moral complexity of the song is reflected in its development. It begins with the searing words of Rama to Sita, moves on to provide examples of Sita’s extraordinary powers created by her purity, climaxes in the fire test, alludes to gossip about Sita’s purity in Lanka, and ends with Sita’s return to cool, deep Mother Earth, Sita’s natal home and ultimate refuge. [L. P.] Source: Rame Gowda, P. K. Rajasekara, and S. Basavaiah, eds. Janapada Ramayana [Folk Ramayanas] (Mysore: n.p., 1973), vol. 1, pp. 16–17. Do You Accept My Truth, My Lord? women’s folksong Go to the river bank and make a ball of sand. Make a vessel of sand and fetch water in it, Sita. Then will I accept your truth. Making a vessel of sand, taking water in it, she placed it in front of Rama—did Sita. Do you accept my truth, My Lord? Using a serpent’s coil for a pot-rest on your head, Sita, if you fetch me water in a sheaf of paddy, then will I accept your truth. Going to the anthill, standing there, reaching into the snake hole—what did she say? You who reside in this anthill, O Serpent, Sovereign of the Earth, won’t you at least bite me to death? Bringing out the hissing one, coiling it around her arm, slipping it off to make a pot-rest, she places it on her head. With the serpent coiled into a pot-rest, Sita, carrying water in a sheaf of paddy, Sita, placing it near Rama—what did she say? Do you accept my truth, My Great Lord? As jasmine in the...

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