CHITRAKOOTA

Here and in other places, Vaalmeeki describes how Raama and Lakshmana secured food by hunting. He makes it quite plain that they had to subsist largely on meat. Some good men are troubled by this. But meat was not prohibited for Kshatriyas. Indeed, it has always been the rule in India to permit any food legitimately obtained and consecrated as a sacrifice. Raama was a Kshatriya and he lived in the forest in the Kshatriya way, though abstemiously.

The following morning Raama woke up Lakshmana and said: "Listen, the birds are singing to the morning sun. It is time for us to start."

The popular story that Lakshmana spent the whole period of forest life without food or sleep is not found in Vaalmeeki. Sometimes, even, through fatigue Lakshmana did not get up quite early in the morning and Raama had to rouse him from slumber!

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