Voices from India notes

Kishkindha Kand is the fourth stair of the Ramcharitmanas: Rama and Lakshmana, searching for Sita, meet Hanuman on Rishyamuka, then Sugriva. The syllabus does not set the whole kand. It sets the friendship, the tale of Bali, the teaching on a true friend, the first combat, the arrow, and the opening of Bali’s last speech. Earlier dohas (Hanuman’s recognition of Rama, the fire-witness of friendship) are context, not the set lines. Later dohas (Bali’s death-song in full, the rains, the search for Sita) are not set. Write enough place to seat couplets 5–9, then stop.

Form: chaupai narrative in Awadhi, closed by a doha (couplet) that names the turn. On the Gita Press page, 5(1–7) means the seven chaupais after doha 5, running toward doha 6 — Sugriva’s history — not a random seven from the kand. Keep Gita Press as the named book. This is Voices from India, not a Victorian poem; do not call it a dramatic monologue because Bali speaks.

Just before doha 5 (context, not the numbered 5(1–7)): after the fire-sealed friendship, Sugriva, eyes wet, tells Rama he will meet Janaka’s daughter. Once, sitting with ministers, he saw a woman forced along the sky-path, crying “Rama, Rama,” who dropped a cloth when she saw them. Rama takes the cloth to his breast and is heavy with thought. Sugriva asks him to take courage; he will serve in every way so that Sita is found. Doha 5: the ocean of grace, the bound of strength, rejoices at a friend’s speech, and asks — Sugriva, why do you live in the forest?

Sugriva answers (chaupais 5(1–7) into doha 6). Bali and he were brothers, love not to be told. Mayavi, son of Maya, shouted at the city gate at midnight; Bali ran; Sugriva followed; the foe hid in a cave. Bali told him to wait a fortnight; if Bali did not come, count him dead. Blood poured from the cave; Sugriva, thinking Bali killed, sealed the cave and fled. Ministers, seeing the city without a lord, forced the crown on him. Bali returned, had slain the foe, took Sugriva for a traitor, beat him, took his all and his wife. For fear of Bali, Sugriva wandered the worlds; a curse keeps Bali from this hill, yet fear stays. Rama’s arms twitch at a servant’s grief. Doha 6: he will kill Bali with one arrow; even if Bali ran to Brahma or Rudra, his life would not be saved. Hold this as the political-personal knot: stolen wife, forced kingship, a vow of one shaft. It is the same kand that will ask, in the next lesson, what a friend is.

The first fifteen chaupais after doha 6 are the set moral core. Those who are not pained by a friend’s pain — to look at them is heavy sin. One’s own sorrow should be dust; a friend’s sorrow, Meru. Who has not this mind by nature, why force friendship? A friend turns one from the wrong path, shows virtue, hides fault, gives and takes without suspicion, always does good according to his strength, and in calamity loves a hundredfold — that, say the scriptures, is a saint’s friend. The opposite: soft words in front, harm behind, a mind like a snake’s gait — such a false friend is well abandoned. Four thorns: a stupid servant, a miser king, a bad woman, a deceitful friend. Rama tells Sugriva to drop anxiety; the work will be done in every way.

Sugriva then shows the bones of Dundubhi and the palm-trees; Rama fells them without effort; faith that Bali can be killed is born. Sugriva bows and, for a moment, knowledge rises: wealth, family, greatness all hinder Rama-bhakti; enemy and friend, pleasure and pain, are maya, not the highest meaning. Bali becomes, in that flash, the one by whose grace he met Rama. The syllabus cuts at chaupai 15, as that vairagya speech begins — not yet the walk to the duel. In an answer, name the true-friend list, the four thorns, Dundubhi as the test of strength, and the first turning of Sugriva from kingship toward bhajan. Do not finish Bali’s death in this lesson if the question is only 6(1–15).

Lead-in (Tara’s warning and doha 7, needed to seat the set four): Tara tells Bali that the two with Sugriva are Rama and Lakshmana, sons of the Kosala king, able to beat even Death; Bali calls her timid. Doha 7: if they kill me I shall still have found a lord. Then the set 7(1–4): he goes, proud, counting Sugriva a blade of grass. They fight; Bali strikes; Sugriva flees; the fist is like thunder. Sugriva cries that this wretch is not his brother in any good sense — which is what he had told Rama. (The next un-set chaupais explain Rama’s delay: the brothers look alike.) The set four lines are the pride, the blow, the flight.

Doha 8: Rama draws and strikes Bali in the chest. 8(1–5): Bali falls, rises, sees the dark body, matted hair, red eyes, bow strung; he fixes his heart on the feet, counts the birth fulfilled because he has recognised the Lord — then his mouth is hard. “You took body for dharma, and killed me like a hunter.” The next breath of the charge (just after the fifth) names the knot: I was the enemy, Sugriva the dear one — what was my fault? Hold hunter + dharma + hidden arrow. 9(1–2) begins the answer of grace: Rama, hearing the tender pain inside the hard words, touches Bali’s head with his hand, and offers to make the body deathless if Bali will keep his life. Bali’s full reply and the chhand of leaving the body fall after the syllabus cut. Stop at the touch and the offer. An answer that only says “Rama killed Bali” has not walked the set speech. Name hunter, dharma, the chest-arrow, and the hand on the head.

Mahamati Prannath (1618–1694) was born at Jamnagar in Kathiawar (Gujarat) and taught in western India and later Bundelkhand (Panna). His verses were sung; Kirantan is that sung book. The larger corpus (Kulzam Swaroop) gathers Veda and Quran and other books toward one claim: the soul’s home is the Supreme, the Limitless, beyond even the usual heavens of the learned, and the religions are roads if they wake that soul. Arora’s 1994 English is the paper’s named text. The eight headings are the set, not the whole of Kirantan. Because the English wording is Arora’s, exam answers should carry the titles and the doctrine, not a rival translation.

Read the eight as a path, not eight stray hymns. Know thyself — the work is inward: who is the soul, whose is the body. The World is a strange show and The world is a play of mind — the bazaar, the court, the sects are a spectacle and a mental play, not the Limitless. To the seekers of Truth and To the seekers of Limitless — two addresses to those who have already left display; truth is not a school-label; the Limitless is the goal named in Prannath’s paramdham teaching. O my Soul — the singer turns from crowd to the companion within. I want to ask the learned — pandit and priest are questioned: your reading has not ended the soul’s exile. The souls of the Limitless — the company of those who belong to that home. Stay inside these jobs. Do not turn Prannath into Tulsidas’s Rama-katha, or into Vivekananda’s Gita-karma, even though all three speak of a self that is more than the show.

The world as show: empty rite and sect-pride are the saint’s weather. “O my Soul” sounds like a bhakti pad, but the beloved is the unform Limitless, not Kishkindha’s bow-bearing Rama. Beside Tulsidas: Rama is sagun, with bow and a friend’s grief; Prannath’s Limitless is the end of shows. Beside Vivekananda: work without attachment is a yoga of action in the world; these titles stress waking from the show. An answer that lumps all Unit 5 as “bhakti” has not separated the three. Name Arora, the eight titles in order, and one contrast.

Chapter III of Karma Yoga is the set prose, named with the Advaita Ashrama / Complete Works URL. Helping others physically is good, but the greatness of help follows the reach of the need. Food for an hour is help; food for a year is more; that which removes want for ever is greatest. Spiritual knowledge alone destroys misery for good; intellectual gift is next; physical help is last and least as a cure, because hunger returns. Hospitals and asylums will not end misery until character changes. Ignorance is the mother of evil. The Gita’s command is to work incessantly. Every work mixes good and evil; both bind the soul. The Gita’s solution: do not attach yourselves to the work, and it will not bind.

Samskara is the mark a wave leaves on the lake of mind, the chance of that wave returning. Character is the sum of such impressions. Bad words, thoughts, acts fill the mind with bad marks and make a machine of evil; good marks can force a man to good even against a passing wish. When the good tendency is established, the tortoise-head of the senses stays in the shell. Higher still is the desire for liberation: freedom from the golden chain as well as the iron. Bad tendencies are pulled out by good ones, as a thorn by a thorn; then both thorns are thrown away. Work, but let not action cut a deep mark on the soul. This is the chapter’s first room: rank of help, incessant work, non-attachment, character as impression.

The second room is how non-attachment feels. Among a hundred faces, the loved face stays: attachment, not the retina, cuts the groove. Be unattached; work as a stranger and sojourner; nature is for the soul’s education, a book to read and put down. Work like a master, not a slave. Slave-work is selfish work; love never comes until there is freedom. Real love has no painful jealousy; if it hurts, it is not love. Krishna in the Gita works because he loves the world, not because he has something to gain. Attachment is clinging of particles; real love may be a thousand miles apart and not die. Take toward city, state, or person the attitude you have toward your children: give, expect nothing. Might is selfishness; mercy is heaven; even justice should stand on mercy. Work as worship if you hold a Personal God: fruits given to the Lord, as water does not wet the lotus leaf.

The mongoose at the Pandavas’ sacrifice is the set parable. Half its body is gold from rolling on a poor Brahmin household’s last flour, given to a starving guest until the family died. The rich royal sacrifice cannot turn the other half gold. Charity that advertises is not that death-point giving. Vivekananda adds: to be an ideal householder is as hard as, or harder than, to be an ideal sannyasin. Never vaunt gifts; be grateful to the poor for the chance to practise. Beside Tulsidas: Rama’s work in Kishkindha is attached in love to Sita and to a friend, yet it is dharma, not slave-work. Beside Prannath: the show of the world is here the field of karma, not only a thing to wake from. Quote the rank of help, non-attachment, and the mongoose if the question is this chapter. Do not retell all of Karma Yoga.