What happens
After Sītā's descent into the earth, Rāma rules a long time alone. Then a messenger comes from Brahmā — Time itself, in the form of an ascetic — with a private message, on the condition that anyone who interrupts must be put to death. Lakṣmaṇa, obliged by a sage's threat to curse the kingdom, interrupts. Rāma, bound by his own word, cannot spare him; the counsellors advise that banishment is the equivalent of death for a righteous man, and Lakṣmaṇa is dismissed, goes to the Sarayū, and gives up his body there.
Rāma divides Kosala between his sons, installing Kuśa at Kuśāvatī and Lava at Śrāvastī, and settles his brothers' sons in their own cities. Then he walks to the Sarayū. The people of Ayodhyā follow him — the poem says the whole city, with the animals — and go into the water with him. He resumes his celestial form.
Hanumān does not go. Rāma has granted him life for as long as the story is told, and he remains on earth.
The ending
The Rāmāyaṇa's last book closes not with a triumph but with a dissolution: the wife gone into the earth, the brother dismissed on a technicality, the kingdom divided, and the city emptied into a river. Even the final catastrophe follows from a promise kept exactly — Rāma cannot spare Lakṣmaṇa because he gave his word, which is the mechanism that began the story.
The tradition has generally preferred to end at the coronation, and a great many retellings do. Vālmīki's poem, as it stands, does not.
The technicality
The mechanism of Lakṣmaṇa's death is deliberately mechanical. A messenger from Brahmā requires a private audience on penalty of death to anyone who interrupts; the sage Durvāsas arrives at the door and threatens to curse the kingdom if he is not admitted at once; Lakṣmaṇa chooses the kingdom and interrupts, knowing what it costs.
Rāma cannot spare him without breaking his word, and the counsellors find the only available exit: banishment is the equivalent of death for a righteous man. Lakṣmaṇa goes to the river.
The city that follows
The last scene is the strangest in the poem. Rāma walks into the Sarayū, and Ayodhyā goes with him — the epic says the citizens, the household, and the animals of the city, all of them entering the water and being taken up.
Hanumān is the exception, held on earth by the boon that he live as long as the story is told. The poem ends with its own transmission as the one thing left standing.
Further reading
- Bose, Mandakranta. The Ramayana Revisited. Oxford University Press, 2004
- Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Goldman, Robert P. The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Princeton University Press, 1984
- Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press, 2007
- Whaling, Frank. The Rise of the Religious Significance of Rama. Motilal Banarsidass, 1980
See also
- The Sarayū — The Sarayū is the river of Ayodhyā in the Rāmāyaṇa, on which the city stands, where Daśaratha killed the ascetic's son, and into which Rāma finally walked to leave the world.
- Rāma — Rāma is the prince of Ayodhyā at the centre of the Rāmāyaṇa, exiled for fourteen years by his father's promise, and worshipped across the Hindu world as an incarnation of Viṣṇu and the model of righteous conduct.
- Lakṣmaṇa — Lakṣmaṇa is Rāma's younger brother in the Rāmāyaṇa, who follows him into exile and serves fourteen years as guard and companion, mutilates Śūrpaṇakhā, kills Indrajit, and carries out the order to abandon Sītā.
- Lava and Kuśa — Lava and Kuśa are the twin sons of Rāma and Sītā in the Rāmāyaṇa, born at Vālmīki's hermitage after their mother's banishment and raised there, who sang their father's story to him at his horse sacrifice without knowing whose sons they were.
- Uttara Kāṇḍa — The Uttara Kāṇḍa is the seventh book of the Rāmāyaṇa, covering Rāvaṇa's ancestry, the banishment of the pregnant Sītā, the birth of Lava and Kuśa and Sītā's return into the earth — generally held with the first book to be a later addition.
- Ayodhyā — Ayodhyā is the capital of Kosala and the city of Rāma in the Rāmāyaṇa, on the river Sarayū, described as unconquerable — which is what its name means.
- Kuśāvatī and Śrāvastī — Kuśāvatī and Śrāvastī are the cities in the Rāmāyaṇa's last book where Rāma installed his sons Kuśa and Lava when he divided Kosala at the end of his reign.
- Hanumān — Hanumān is the vānara minister of Sugrīva in the Rāmāyaṇa who leaps the ocean to find Sītā in Laṅkā and burns the city, and who became in later devotion the model of service and one of the most widely worshipped deities in India.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.