(“furrow”) Daughter of King Janaka, wife of the god-prince
Rama (himself the deity Vishnu's seventh avatar or incarnation), and a key
female character in the Ramayana, the first of the two great Sanskrit epics.
Sita's identity is nearly entirely derived from her husband,
unlike many other Hindu deities, and she has no independent devotion or
personality of her own.
Her kidnapping by the demon king Ravana is the central story
point of the Ramayana, causing her husband and companions to search the world
for her before fighting a climactic battle to reclaim her, which ends with
Ravana's death.
Throughout the chaos, Sita quietly waits to be rescued,
certain that this would bring more honor to her husband.
Sita is not born normally, according to her charter story,
but is discovered in a furrow by King Janaka while he ploughs his field.
As a result, Sita has a strong connection to the ground,
fertility, and prosperity; as David Kinsley points out, her marriage to Rama
represents the union of the fertile land and a righteous monarch who would
prosper it.
When she calls on the ground to swallow her up as a
testimony to her virginity in response to Rama's allegations of unfaithfulness,
she vanishes forever.
Sita's greatest virtue is her love for her husband, and she
is a model Hindu wife in her unwavering devotion to him, much as many of the
Ramayana's other characters exemplify cultural values.
When Rama is wrongfully banished in the jungle for fourteen
years, she shows an early proof of her love.
Sita is resolved to follow him into exile, despite the fact
that she has never known anything except wealth and leisure.
She believes that a true wife should always accompany her
husband.
Rama complains, argues, and even prohibits her, but Sita
refuses to obey her husband's wishes—perhaps the only time she does so.
She joins Rama and her brother-in-law Lakshmana in the
jungle, happily accepting the harsh life of an ascetic in order to be with her
husband.
When she is kidnapped and kept hostage by Ravana, her
devotion to her husband is put to the ultimate test.
Despite Ravana's constant lobbying, threats, and efforts to
persuade her that Rama has been murdered, she remains firm in her beliefs.
Ravana's feet are the only part of him she ever sees, according
to one account, since she kept her eyes modestly downcast rather than gaze
straight at another man like a loyal wife would.
When Hanuman, Rama's ally, finds Sita's hiding place, she
refuses to let him take her away since it would entail touching another man and
denying her husband the chance to save her.
Rama feels that she must have been disloyal to him
throughout her lengthy incarceration, thus her love is severely tested once she
is rescued.
This charge stems from the Indian traditional belief that
women have much more sex desires than males, and far less capacity to manage
them.
She begs Rama to build her a funeral pyre and enters it with
the hope that the flames would not hurt her if she is innocent.
She emerges unhurt from the inferno, with the deity Agni
(fire personified) as a witness to her virginity.
Despite this evidence, Rama exiles her from Ayodhya upon
their return.
When Rama requests a second suffering, Sita asks the ground
to swallow her up as a testament to her purity, and then vanishes.
Sita's capacity to endure both ordeals underscores the
widely held Indian concept that women obtain power by their devotion to their
husbands, power that may be so strong that they can even curse the gods.
Cultural signals regarding women's roles and the value of
their interactions with others are encoded in this idea.
Sita is an ideal Indian lady who is devoted to her husband
and his family first and foremost.
This represents the northern Indian marriage custom of
bringing women into the groom's household and assimilating them into their
married families, breaking their ties to their birth families.
Wives are supposed to put other people's needs ahead of their
own in order to have a happy marriage.
A wife becomes an example for everybody to admire and revere
in exchange for such self-sacrifice.
See John Stratton Hawley and Donna Wulff (eds. ), The Divine
Consort, 1986; David R. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses, 1986; and Sara Mitter,
Dharma's Daughters, 1991 for additional information about Sita and all the
Hindu goddesses.