Dasharatha- Hindu FigureMortal"King of Ayodhya"

The Warrior King

Dasharatha ruled Ayodhya as heir to the Solar Dynasty, the line of kings descended from Ikshvaku, grandson of the sun god Surya. His name meant "one who fights in ten directions at once," and he had earned it. He could drive a chariot and loose arrows in every direction simultaneously, a feat that made even the gods take notice.

Kaikeyi's Boons

When the gods called on Dasharatha for aid against the demon Shambara, he rode his chariot into the heavens. During the battle, an axle shattered and the wheel cracked apart. Kaikeyi, the youngest of his three queens, had ridden to war beside him. She seized the broken axle and held the chariot together with her own hands while driving through the worst of the fighting.

Afterward, Dasharatha promised her two boons she could claim at any time. She tucked them away like coins and forgot them.

The Sacrifice for Sons

Dasharatha had three queens and no sons. Without an heir, the Solar Dynasty would end and no son would perform the ancestral rites for his soul. On the counsel of the sage Vasishtha, he performed the Putrakameshti yajna, a fire sacrifice for the sole purpose of obtaining children. The sage Rishyasringa, whose presence alone could bring rain to parched land, conducted the ritual.

From the flames a figure rose, sent by Vishnu, bearing a vessel of sacred payasam. Dasharatha divided it: half to Kausalya, his senior queen; a quarter to Sumitra; portions to Kaikeyi and to Sumitra again. From Kausalya came Rama, who carried the largest share of divine essence and was Vishnu incarnate. From Kaikeyi came Bharata. From Sumitra came the twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna.

Rama captured his father's heart above all others. The eldest combined every virtue the Solar Dynasty prized, and as the years passed, Dasharatha began preparing to install him as heir.

The Exile of Rama

When Dasharatha announced Rama's coronation, Ayodhya celebrated. In the queens' quarters, Manthara, Kaikeyi's hunchbacked maid, saw it differently. She worked on Kaikeyi through the night and stoked her fear that Rama on the throne would reduce Bharata to nothing.

Kaikeyi remembered her two boons. She entered the anger chamber and refused to come out until the king arrived. Dasharatha came expecting celebration. He found demands: Bharata crowned king, Rama exiled to the forest for fourteen years.

He begged. He raged. He fell at her feet, weeping. He offered her anything else in his power. Kaikeyi would not move. A king's word, once given, could not be broken without unraveling the dharmic authority on which his throne rested. The very righteousness that defined his rule now compelled him to destroy it.

Rama himself cut through the impossible choice. Told of Kaikeyi's demands, he accepted exile without protest. His father's word must stand. The Ayodhya Kanda shows Dasharatha clutching at Rama's retreating figure, collapsing on the palace floor, calling out to a son who would not turn back.

Shravana's Curse

As Dasharatha lay dying, a memory surfaced from decades past. As a young prince, he had practiced shabdabhedi archery on the banks of the Sarayu, shooting by sound alone in the darkness. He heard what he took for an elephant drinking. He loosed an arrow. A boy screamed.

The arrow had struck Shravana Kumar, a young ascetic who had been carrying his blind, elderly parents on a yoke across his shoulders, fetching water for them on their pilgrimage. Shravana died in Dasharatha's arms, but first he begged the prince to bring water to his parents before they perished of thirst.

Dasharatha carried the water and the news. The blind father, holding his dead son, cursed the prince: as Shravana had died separated from his loving parents, so Dasharatha would die from the grief of separation from his own son.

Death

Dasharatha did not survive the night after Rama's departure. His life drained with each step his son took toward the forest. Kausalya and Sumitra sat with him. No physician could treat the wound. Through the darkness he told Kausalya the story of Shravana, confessing the old sin that explained everything. He died calling Rama's name.

Bharata, summoned from his grandfather's kingdom, arrived to find his father dead and his brother gone. He denounced Kaikeyi before the court and performed the funeral rites. Then he marched into the forest to bring Rama home. Rama refused. Their father's word would stand.

Bharata returned to Ayodhya with Rama's sandals. He placed them on the throne and governed from the nearby town of Nandigrama, never once sitting in the seat that was not his. In the Uttara Kanda, Dasharatha appeared to Rama from heaven during the Ashvamedha sacrifice, his grief ended at last, his blessings given. The old curse had run its course.