Ayodhya's Markets Offer Their Goods without Asking for Coin
Uttara Kanda, Chhand 8
Doha 28 · Movement 2 of 3
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The bazaars are too lovely for description. Their stalls overflow, yet goods may be received without the knot of a price being tied. Abundance has loosened the anxious grip between possession and need.
Cloth merchants, jewelers, and traders sit in long ranks, each appearing prosperous as Kubera. Where the Lord of Lakshmi rules, the city's wealth cannot be measured by ordinary accounts.
Women, men, children, and elders move through the market in happiness, beauty, and upright character. Commerce remains, but deprivation has vanished from its center. The marketplace no longer stages fear of scarcity. It becomes a public display of sufficiency beneath Rama's reign, where the riches of the city circulate among people whose conduct is itself another form of wealth.
In Rama's bazaar, the untied price reveals a deeper prosperity: abundance has forgotten how to guard itself from need.
Read the passage from the Manas
बाजार रुचिर न बनइ बरनत बस्तु बिनु गथ पाइए। जहँ भूप रमानिवास तहँ की संपदा किमि गाइए।। बैठे बजाज सराफ बनिक अनेक मनहुँ कुबेर ते। सब सुखी सब सच्चरित सुंदर नारि नर सिसु जरठ जे।।
The lovely bazaars cannot be described in words. Goods could be had without spending a single coin. Where the Lord, the abode of Ramaa (Lakshmi), is king, how can one sing the full measure of that city's wealth? Cloth merchants, jewelers, and traders beyond count sat there, each as splendid as Kubera himself. All were happy, all were virtuous and beautiful: women, men, children, and elders alike.