-hears and acknowledges their praise and devotion and humility and good intentions, and greets all with courteous words. If this is the way with earthly kings, what of the lord of Kosala, the crown of wisdom?

Rama is pleased with genuine love; but who in the world is duller and feebler of intellect even than I?

Yet will the merciful Rama regard the love and devotion of his wicked servant; for he is gracious who made barks out of rocks and appointed monkeys and bears as his wise ministers.

Sita’s lord the master and Tulasidasa the servant! Everyone calls me so and I say so too, and Rama is exposed to ridicule!

Very great are my presumptions and sins; even hell is filled with disgust when it hears of my wickedness, and when I realize it, I shudder and am sore afraid; but Rama has never for a moment taken any notice of my sins.

When, on the other hand, he heard them and considered them and looked on them with the mind’s eye, my master praised my devotion and my spirit; through my claim sounds ill, it is a sing of inward grace, and Rama is pleased to note what is there in the devotee’s mind.

The Lord is not mindful of the sins we have committed, but considers a hundred times the purpose of the heart. Thus the very crime for which he slew Bali like a huntsman was the sin of Sugriva. (Bali, the monkey king of Kishkindha, was killed by Rama on the plea that the former had usurped his younger brother’s wife. Sugriva and Vibhishana too are stated to have taken Tara, Bali’s wife, and Mandodari, Ravana’s wife, respectively as their consort after the death of their husbands.)