A Prince Born of a Sacrifice, and a Bow No One Else Could Lift

Bala Kanda, the Book of Youth, opens with the childless King Dasharatha of Ayodhya performing a great sacrifice that grants him four sons by his three queens, Rama, born to Kausalya and understood from birth as an incarnation of the god Vishnu sent to rid the world of the demon king Ravana; Bharata, born to Kaikeyi; and the twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna, born to Sumitra.

The sage Vishwamitra soon takes the young Rama and his devoted brother Lakshmana away from the palace to protect his forest sacrifice from demonic interference, and Rama kills the demoness Tataka and other disruptive rakshasas along the way, his first demonstrations of the extraordinary strength his divine nature carries. The book's central set piece is the swayamvara of Sita, adopted daughter of King Janaka of Mithila, found as an infant in a furrow while Janaka was ploughing a ritual field, whose hand is offered to whichever suitor can string and bend an immense bow belonging to the god Shiva; Rama not only strings it but breaks it in the attempt, winning Sita's hand, and the book closes with a joyful multiple wedding as Rama's three brothers also marry Sita's sister and cousins, uniting the two royal houses. Vishwamitra also imparts to Rama and Lakshmana a set of powerful sacred weapons and their invocations during the forest mission, knowledge that becomes decisive far later, in the war against Ravana, tying this early book's events directly to the epic's eventual climax.