Sita
- Sanskrit:
- “Furrow”
- Also called:
- Janaki
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Sita, in Hinduism, the consort of the god Rama. Her abduction by the demon king Ravana and subsequent rescue are the central incidents in the great Hindu epic Ramayana (“Rama’s Journey”).
Sita was raised by King Janaka; she was not his natural daughter but sprang from a furrow when he was ploughing his field. Rama won her as his bride by bending Shiva’s bow, and she accompanied her husband when he went into exile. Though carried away to Lanka by Ravana, she kept herself chaste by concentrating her heart on Rama throughout her long imprisonment. On her return she asserted her purity and also proved it by voluntarily undergoing an ordeal by fire. Rama, however, banished her to the forest in deference to public opinion. There she gave birth to their two children, Kusha and Lava. After they reached maturity and were acknowledged by Rama to be his sons, she called upon her mother, Earth, to swallow her up.
Sita is worshipped as the incarnation of Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu. Though often regarded as the embodiment of wifely devotion and self-sacrifice, she is critical of Rama at times, even in the earliest version of the Ramayana, and in some of the later versions of the story she departs from the idealized, chaste image of the earlier text. She is frequently depicted in Indian miniature paintings of the Ramayana and in South Indian bronzes. These usually form a group, with images of Rama, his brother Lakshmana, and his devotee, the monkey Hanuman. The iconographic texts instruct the artist to show Sita looking at her husband with supreme happiness.
