He then told them of the king’s death. When Raghunatha heard it, he was deeply pained, for he thought that the king had died out of love for him; the firmest of the firm was thus grievously moved.

On hearing the bitter news, cruel as a thunderbolt, Lakshmana, Sita and all the queens broke out into lamentations, and the whole company was as sore stricken with grief as though the king died that very day.

When the great sage (Vasishtha) exhorted Rama, he with the whole company bathed in Mandakini the heavenly stream. On that day the Lord vowed to fast and refrained from drinking water, and even though the sage allowed them, no one else would drink either.

At daybreak the Lord Raghunatha reverently and devoutly did all that the sage bade him do.

Having performed his father’s funeral rites as prescribed in the Vedas, the Lord became pure - even he, the sun who annihilates the darkness of sun, whose Name is a fire to consume the cotton of iniquity, and its remembrance the source of all choice blessings,

- attained purity; it was – so the sages unanimously say – like the Ganga attaining purity by the invocation of holy places. (In the Ganga are concentrated the virtues of all holy places; it is therefore a work of supererogation for anyone to invoke any other power unless one wishes to purify the powers invoked by bringing them into contact with the Ganga. In like manner, Rama, the all-pure, purified the rituals themselves by his act of ceremonial purification.) When two days passed after his purification, Rama said affectionately to the guru:

‘Lord, all the people are much inconvenienced, living as they do on nothing but bulbs and roots and fruit and water. When I took at Bharata and his younger brother (Shatrughna), the ministers and all the queens, every minute that passes seems to me to pass like an age.