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116
SETUBANDHA
67. Languid and drooping as she confronted the head, she found no words nor death, even though, on seeing it, she had longed for both.
68. Sītā then fell prostrate, her hair dishevelled and filled with dust, and her breasts pressed close15 against the ground, covered with her bosom.
69. Even though she lay outstretched, her waist, slim 16 with the fleshy folds entirely smoothed out, did not touch the ground, being held between the breasts and the hips.
70. Her consciousness, disrupted at the sudden appearance (of the severed head), while she had hoped to see her beloved's face with soothing words, 17 returned along with her tears, after being long eclipsed by the swoon.
71. Having somehow recovered consciousness, she tried to arrange her tresses adhering to her cheeks, bedewed with tears, but her weary hand failed to move.
72. Her eagerly lifted hands,18 worn out with fatigue and unsteady, dropped on her lap without having reached the breasts.
73. Bewildered and unable in any wise to look straight at Rāma's head, she beheld it as her weary face leaned sideways, with her tresses moving in its wake,
74. Sitā began to wail, venting her grief for Rāma upon her own body, with her plump bosom blood-stained on account of blows with her hands.
own about when the praih, venting the for Rāma upon her
75. "Suffering is terrible only at the outset; its sequel is not severe, since I have seen and endured thy end, something abhorrent to a woman.
76. "Tell me how I am to assuage my grief, which began since my departure from home, and which I had purposed to allay by shedding ardent tears on thy bosom.
15. Lit. rounded. 16. Lit. elongated.
17. Acc. to Ramadāsa's reading (see Extracts): remorsefully, i.e., with a sense of guilt for having caused him so great hardship and suffering.
18. i.e., to beat the breast.
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