Daughter of the Earth, Wife of Rama

Sita is the wife of Rama and the heroine of the Ramayana, found as an infant in a furrow as her father Janaka ploughed a field, so that she is a daughter of the earth itself, and understood in Vaishnava theology as a form of the goddess Lakshmi, born to accompany Vishnu in his descent as Rama. She follows Rama into exile in the forest rather than remain in the palace, is carried off by the demon-king Ravana and held captive in Lanka without ever yielding to him, and is at last recovered by the great war that is the epic's climax. To much of the tradition she is the ideal of steadfast devotion and courage under duress.

Two of the epic's seven books, the opening Bala Kanda and the closing Uttara Kanda, which contains her banishment during pregnancy and final return to the earth, her mother, rather than to Rama, are widely regarded by scholars as later additions to an original five-book core, on grounds of language, metre and theology, including the fact that only these books treat Rama unambiguously as God descended rather than as an exemplary human king; the Uttara Kanda's harsher treatment of Sita has accordingly drawn particular scholarly and popular scrutiny as likely reflecting a later stage in the tradition. Nepal's Janakpur is venerated as her traditional birthplace and childhood home, and hosts a major temple and continuing pilgrimage tradition linking the epic's geography to a living site.