'In that forest there is a hermitage, famed throughout the world--a very birthplace of Dharma. It is adorned with trees tended by Lopamudra as her own children, fed with water sprinkled by her own hands, and trenched round by herself. She was the wife of the great ascetic Agastya; he it was who at the prayer of Indra drank up the waters of ocean, and who, when the Vindhya mountains, by a thousand wide peaks stretching to the sky in rivalry of Meru, were striving to stop the course of the sun's chariot, and were despising the prayers of all the gods, yet had his commands obeyed by them; who digested the demon Vatapi by his inward fire; who had the dust of his feet kissed by the tips of the gold ornaments on the crests of gods and demons; who adorned the brow of the Southern Region; and who manifested his majesty by casting Nahusha down from heaven by the mere force of his murmur.
(44) 'The hermitage is also hallowed by Lopamudra's son Dridhadasyu, an ascetic, bearing his staff of palaça, [95] wearing a sectarial mark made of purifying ashes, clothed in strips of kuça grass, girt with muñja, holding a cup of green leaves in his roaming from hut to hut to ask alms. From the large supply of fuel he brought, he was surnamed by his father Fuelbearer.
'The place is also darkened in many a spot by green parrots and by plantain groves, and is girt by the river Godaveri, which, like a dutiful wife, followed the path of the ocean when drunk by Agastya.
'There, too, Rama, when he gave up his kingdom to keep his father's promise, dwelt happily for some time at Pañcavati with Sita, following the great ascetic Agastya, living in a pleasant hut made by Lakshmana, even Rama, the vexer of the triumphs of Ravana's glory. [96]
'There, even now, the trees, though the hermitage has long been empty, show, as it were, in the lines of white doves softly nestling in the boughs, the hermits' pure lines of sacrificial smoke clinging to them; and there a glow bursts forth on the shoots of creepers, as if it had passed to them from Sita's hand as she offered flowers of oblation; (45) there the water of ocean drunk and sent forth by the ascetic seems to have been wholly distributed among the great lakes round the hermitage; there the wood, with its fresh foliage, shines as if its roots had been watered with the blood of countless hosts of demons struck down by Rama's many keen shafts, and as if now its palaaças were stained with their crimson hue; there, even yet, the old deer nurtured by Sita, when they hear the deep roar of fresh clouds in the rainy season, think on the twang of Rama's bow penetrating all the hollows of the universe, and refuse their mouthfuls of fresh grass, while their eyes are dimmed by ceaseless tears, as they see a deserted world, and their own horns crumbling from age; there, too, the golden deer, as if it had been incited by the rest of the forest deer slain in the ceaseless chase, deceived Sita, and led the son of Raghu far astray; there, too, in their grief for the bitter loss of Sita, Rama and Lakshmana seized by Kabandha, like an eclipse of sun and moon heralding the death of Ravana, filled the universe with a mighty dread; (46) there, too, the arm of Yojanabahu, struck off by Rama's arrow, caused fear in the saints as it lay on the ground, lest it should be the serpent form of Nahusha, brought back by Agastya's curse; there, even now, foresters behold Sita painted inside the hut by her husband to solace his bereavement, as if she were again rising from the ground in her longing to see her husband's home.