Note 9 — Chapter CXIII

Now, one day, his wife Mádrí left the hermitage to gather fruits and flowers for him with her own hands, and a certain old Bráhman came and asked Tárávaloka, who was in his hut, for his sons Ráma and Lakshmaṇa. Tárávaloka said to himself, “I shall be better able to endure letting these sons of mine, though they are quite infants, be led away,9 than I could possibly manage to endure the sending a suppliant away disappointed: the fact is, cunning fate is eager to see my resolution give way”: then he gave those sons to the Bráhman. And when the Bráhman tried to take them away, they refused to go; then he tied their hands and beat them with creepers; and as the cruel man took them away, they kept crying for their mother, and turning round and looking at their father with tearful eyes. Even when Tárávaloka saw that, he was unmoved, but the whole world of animate and inanimate existences was moved at his fortitude.