Who Sita is
Sita is the heroine of the Ramayana and the wife of Rama, and for many Hindus she is the ideal of a wife and a queen, though she has always been more than that.
She was not born to anyone. Her father, King Janaka of Mithila, found her as a baby in the furrow his plough cut in the earth, and named her Sita, the furrow. When she grew up, he promised her to whoever could string the great bow of Shiva, and Rama broke it.
Siyavar Ramachandra ki jai: the cry of the Ramlila, glory to Rama, the husband of Sita.
When Rama was sent into exile for fourteen years, she would not be left behind. In the forest the demon king Ravana carried her off to Lanka, where she lived as his prisoner, refusing him, until Rama came with an army of monkeys and killed him. Then, before everyone, Rama doubted her, and she walked into a fire to prove herself, and the god of fire brought her out unharmed.
Even that was not the end. Back in Ayodhya, the people talked, and Rama sent her away. She bore his twin sons in the poet Valmiki's hermitage, and when she was asked to prove herself once more, she asked the Earth, her mother, to take her, and the ground opened.
She is worshipped as Lakshmi on earth, at Rama's side. In many places, from Mithila to the women's songs of the villages, she is also remembered as a woman wronged.
