A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""THE KAMAYANA. 495modern times called Ayodhya, locally called (Oude) mostof 3*pu have seen in the mapof India Oude. That wasthe ancient .Ayodhya. And there, in ancient times reigned a king called Dasaratha ;and he had three queens ;butthe king* had not any children. And then the king andthe ijueens, like good Hindus, they all prayed and fastedanc^ made* pilgrimages so that they might have children ;and in good time four children were born. The eldest ofthem was Rama. Now, these four brothers were educatedby priests as should be ;and then, there was in ancientIndia a custom to avoid future quarrel whereby the kingin his own life-time used to nominate the eldest son as asort of sub-king, the Young-king, as he is called.Xow, there was another king, called Janaka, and thisking had a beautiful daughter, called Sita. This :Sita wasborn without parents. She was found in a field ;she wasword"a Daughter of Earth. The Sita in ancient Sanskrit means the furrow the furrow made by a plough. Inthe ancient mythology of India you will find persons bornonly of one parent, or persons born without parents ;bornof sacrificial fire, born in the field, dropped from the clouds,and so on. Theyall existed all that sort of miraculousbirth.Sita was born without parents, pure and immaculate,She was the Daughter of the Earth. And this Sita wasbrought up by King Janaka. And when she grew up tobe a young lady, he wanted to get her married.There was another ancient Indian custom, what theycall".Swayamvara The princesses chose their husbands.They invited a number of princes from different parts of the*country, and the princess went in the midst of them andselected the person she liked and then they were married.There were numbers of princes who came for the