the text is left with problems it cannot or chooses not to solve.

Rama and Sita are depicted as the ideal romantic couple. Sita, a high-born princess, has the option of her choice of husband in a ceremony called swayamvara, which is Sanskrit for choosing one’s own vara, or bridegroom. Sita will choose for her husband the prince who can lift a divine bow kept in her father’s palace. As a child, Sita could lift this enormously heavy weapon with “one finger” ; her husband must prove her equal. When Rama, destined to be her soulmate, achieves the feat that fails all other princes at Sita’s swayamvara, Sita’s choice is complete. Teenagers when they are married, Rama and Sita display submission to one another, though their expression of this submission is bound by gender roles. Sita obeys Rama unconditionally, while Rama fulfils her every wish without question. While the gendered roles are incompatible with contemporary, liberal thinking, the idea of being married to one’s soulmate is far more palatable.

Another way marriage in the Ramayana differs from contemporary marriage is that the former is a samskara, or a rite, rather than a contract. Though a contract can be dissolved, a rite cannot be undone, which is why there is no concept of divorce in the Ramayana. This makes love between couples even more binding. When Sita is abducted by the demon king Ravana, Rama is almost consumed by grief at her loss. He launches an attack on Lanka, Ravana’s city of gold, to reclaim his beloved bride. Till this point, their relationship fulfills the romantic ideals of their era. Further, Rama and Sita’s relationship is not the only loving relationship presented, nor is Sita the only wife who commands her husband’s devotion and respect. Even Ravana treats his queen Mandodari with love and great courtesy; and it is when he does not heed her wise advice and release Sita that he seals his disastrous fate.

However, when Sita is rescued, we don’t get the seamless, romantic reunion we’ve been expecting. Now, the text begins to shift focus to the social and patriarchy-bound function of marriage. Rama asks Sita to undergo a trial by fire to prove her chastity, since the world must know she is “blameless.” Rama’s behavior here is at complete odds with his lament about Sita in the forest and his poetic, single-minded pursuit of her. Significantly, this change intensifies with Rama and Sita now moving into the public, social world of cities and palaces. During their exile in the forest and their separation, their love was pure and unbound, but in the palace it is oppressed by social pressures, thus setting up a dichotomy between wild and civilized selves and romantic and political selves. After he is crowned King of Ayodhya, Rama banishes Sita because of rumors concerning her and Ravana. As a king, Rama cannot be seen as accommodating a “blemished” bride. Again, Rama’s actions seem to savagely undo his previous love for Sita. Yet, he never remarries, performing rituals next to a gold idol of Sita, since in Hinduism, a ritual is incomplete without a wife. So, how does one make sense of Rama’s contradictory actions and the Ramayana’s ideals about marriage?

I would say that the Ramayana does not try to resolve these contradictions but rather presents them as implacable problems. Torn between the idea of romantic marriage and social, patriarchal marriage, Rama makes decisions that may be socially proper but that leave him emotionally unhappy. In that sense, the Ramayana not only accommodates both contemporary and ancient ideals of marriage, but goes further and shows the difficulty in reconciling both.