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LITERARY EVALUATION
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to come back. Thus she is tender and sympathetic from being naturally cruel and jealous. She asks Rāma to forgive her praying that it was all brought about by the frailty and fickleness of woman's mind. She never intended any harm.
She is a devoted and affectionate mother. She could never live without Bharata. When finally after Rama's return from Lankā, Bharata renounces the world, she finds that life is no more worth living for her. She gets solace only when she also renounces the world.
Sitā:-Sītā of the PCV has not any divine birth. She is born of the wife of Janaka. She is gentle and virtuous, tender and kind-hearted. She shows a child-like simplicity of nature when she requests Rāvana not to kill her brother and her husband. She prevents Lavana and Ankusa from attacking their father. She is patient and forgiving by nature. She does not accuse Rāma at the time of her banishment. She holds that it is due to her own Karmas that she is thrown into exile. Although she is meek and mild yet she is full of self-respect. When called back from exile, Rāma is not ready to accept her without some definite proof of her constancy. Then the suppressed spirit of womanhood rebels in Sitā. She does undergo the fire-ordeal but does not fail to give Ráma a touching reprimand. After the fire-ordeal Rāma asks her to come home. But by now she has been sufficiently acquainted with the crooked and uncertain ways of the world. Two much embittered to accept the worldly life she downright rejects the proposal of Rāma and renounces the world to get the eternal and infinite bliss of emancipation.
F. Poetic Merits:
The Paumacariyam though a Purāņa yet it is not devoid of poetic beauty. The very opening verses in which the poet pays obeisance to the Jinas indicate that the poet has got an easy grip over music and music is the soul of poetry. There are short and charmingly rythmical descriptions strewn all over the work. They ease the tension of the continued narration by their lullying and soothing effect on the minds of the readers. The style of its narration is not pedantic, rather it is simple and easily comprehensible to even an average reader.
DESCRIPTIONS. As regards the scope of the work it covers a large canvas comprising of both the human world and the world of nature.
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