Silks and Jewels Lose Their Purpose
Ayodhya Kanda, Doha 119
Doha 119 · Movement 2 of 2
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The travellers are tender, beautiful, and young, yet bark cloth covers them and matted locks crown their heads. The village lament reaches its simplest and sharpest conclusion.
If such loveliness lives in an ascetic's rough attire, why did the Creator make ornaments, silks, and garments of every kind? The treasures meant to adorn beauty now seem unnecessary beside forms that sanctify austerity itself.
The protest is also praise. Bark cannot diminish Sita, Ram, or Lakshmana. It reveals that their radiance was never borrowed from royal dress. Jewels lose their purpose because the wearers for whom jewels might have seemed worthy have become more beautiful through renunciation.
Bark cloth touches the forest travellers, and every unused jewel in creation suddenly appears poor.
Read the passage from the Manas
जौं ए मुनि पट धर जटिल सुंदर सुठि सुकुमार। बिबिध भाँति भूषन बसन बादि किए करतार।।119।।
If these tender, beautiful ones wear the bark-cloth and matted jata of munis, then the Creator made ornaments and fine garments of every kind for nothing.