valmikiramayan.net Prose Commentary

Desiraju Hanumanta Rao's prose rendering with embedded explanatory notes

The source devotes an extended excursus to this verse, where Janaka addresses Rama not by name but as 'Kausalya's son' while presenting Sita. It reads the verse's three pronouns -- 'this,' 'mine,' 'yours' -- as carrying deliberate weight: 'this' singles Sita out from her sisters as uniquely matched to Rama; 'my daughter' asserts Janaka's claim to her despite her non-uterine birth from the furrow. It cites the Chandogya Upanishad's syllables sa-ti-yam as read by three commentators -- Adi Shankara (sa=immortality, ta=mortality, yam=the bridge between), Ramanuja (a similar mortal-immortal bridge), and Madhvacharya (sa=liberated souls, ti=bound souls, yam=both) -- to argue that Sita's name itself marks her as the conjunction between mortal and immortal, comparable to how the Vishnu Purana describes Vishnu's consort as equally all-pervading and world-sustaining. On this reading, Sita's earth-born origin is not a deficiency but the very sign that she is more than an ordinary bride, and Rama's acceptance of her is inseparable from his mission on earth.