Luv and Kush Are Born and Learn the Ramayana

Sita lived in Valmiki's ashram among the ascetic women. She wore bark cloth, slept on the ground and shared in the work of the ashram. She spoke to no one of her sorrow.

Shatrughna's journey

In those days sages from the bank of the Yamuna came to Ram. "King, in Madhuvana lives an asura named Lavana. He has a trident given by Shiva. As long as that trident is in his hand, no one can kill him. Every day he devours sages and animals."

Ram looked at his brothers. Bharata began to rise, but Shatrughna folded his hands. "Brother, Bharata bore much hardship, sleeping on the ground at Nandigram for fourteen years. Lakshmana bore it in the forest. Give this task to me." Ram anointed him then and there. "Go, kill him, and be king of that land."

Shatrughna sent his army ahead and travelled alone. On the way he halted for a night at Valmiki's ashram. That night, at midnight, there was a stir in the ashram. The sons of the sages came running. "Master, the wife of Ram has given birth to two sons."

The naming

Valmiki went gladly. He took a handful of kusha grass and had the first-born child cleansed with its upper part, and the second with its lower part, which is called lava. "The first shall be named Kush, and the second Luv."

Shatrughna heard the news in his leaf hut. He went at once to the door of Sita's hut and said from outside, "Mother, this is great good fortune." Then he stayed awake all night; that monsoon night seemed to him like a moment. In the morning he went on westward. He told no one in Ayodhya.

Lavana

From the sage Chyavana, Shatrughna learned Lavana's secret: when he went out to hunt in the morning he left the trident at home. Next morning Shatrughna stood with his bow at the gate of the asura's city. Lavana came back carrying thousands of dead animals. Shatrughna would not let him go in. They fought fiercely, and a tree hurled by Lavana once knocked Shatrughna senseless. Then he loosed the heavenly arrow that Ram had given him, and Lavana's end came.

There on the bank of the Yamuna, Shatrughna founded a city. In twelve years it was full of wealth and grain. Its name was Madhura, which today is called Mathura.

After twelve years Shatrughna set out for Ayodhya to see Ram, and again he halted at Valmiki's ashram. That night he heard singing to a veena. In it was everything he had seen with his own eyes: Ram's exile, Bharata at Nandigram, the war in Lanka. Tears ran from his eyes. His soldiers wanted to ask who was singing. Shatrughna said, "Such wonders happen in the hermitages of sages. It is not right to question them."

Two pupils

The singers were Luv and Kush.

Valmiki had raised them as a man raises his own grandsons. He taught them the Vedas and the use of the bow. And when he saw that their memory was keen and their voices sweet, he taught them his whole poem: twenty-four thousand verses, five hundred cantos, seven kandas. He had composed it not to be read but to be sung, with the veena, in all three octaves.

In looks the two boys were like Ram, like two reflections of one image. When they stood in the assembly of sages and sang the poem, the eyes of the listeners filled. One sage gave them his water pot, another a bark garment, another a deerskin. The sages said, "It is a wonder. What happened long ago seems to happen before our eyes when they sing it."

Sita watched all this. She never told her sons who the king was whose story they sang.

Boys who grew up without a palace or a kingdom, far from their father, in a forest, lacked nothing that mattered. They had a mother who could not be shaken, and a great teacher.