Sita's Fast at Munger

When Rama came home to Ayodhya after the war, the city lit its lamps and he was crowned. But the old priests were uneasy.

"Ravana was a demon king," they said, "but his father was the sage Vishravas, and he was born a Brahmin. Whoever kills a Brahmin carries the sin of it, even when the killing was just."

Rama did not argue. "Then tell me how it is to be washed away," he said.

His family priest, Vasishtha, told him to hold a great sacrifice. "But it will not succeed without the sage Mudgala," he said. "Send for him."

The messengers went east, down the Ganga, to the hermitage of Mudgala, which stood on the river where the town of Munger is now. The sage listened to them and shook his head.

"I am too old to travel to Ayodhya," he said. "Tell Rama to come to me. And tell him to bring Sita."

So Rama and Sita came down the river to Munger. Mudgala received them at his hermitage, and he had a task for each of them. Rama was to stay with him and take part in the rites that would clear him of the sin. Sita was to stay in the hermitage and keep a vow to the Sun.

"It is the bright half of Kartika," said the sage. "On the sixth day of the moon, worship the Sun as he goes down, and again as he comes up. Fast in between. Ask him for the good of your house."

Sita did what the sage told her. She bathed in the Ganga and ate one plain meal. She fasted. On the evening of the sixth day she went down to a great rock in the river, stood facing the west with fruit in a winnowing basket, and offered water and her prayer to the setting Sun. She stayed there through the night. In the morning she turned to the east and offered again as the Sun rose. Only then did she eat.

She kept the vow, it is said, for six days in all, and when she stood up from the rock she left the marks of her feet on it.

The rock is still there, a long, low shelf of stone in the bed of the Ganga, a short boat ride from Munger. People call it Manpathar or Sita Charan, Sita's feet. A small temple stands on it, and inside, cut into the stone, are two footprints. Beside them the priests show the marks of a winnowing basket, a tray and a water pot, the things a woman carries to Chhath.

For half the year the river rises over the temple and hides it. When the water goes down, the women of Munger go out to it before they keep their own fast. Munger calls itself the place where Chhath began.

Other tellers keep Sita at home. When Rama and Sita came back to Ayodhya after fourteen years in the forest, they say, Rama's reign was about to begin. Before it began, on the sixth day of the bright half of Kartika, six days after the lamps of Diwali, Rama and Sita fasted together and worshipped the Sun, the first ancestor of Rama's own line.

They offered to the setting Sun on the bank of the Sarayu, and kept watch through the night. At dawn they offered to the rising Sun. Then they broke their fast, and the reign of Rama began, with the blessing of the god from whom every king of Ayodhya was descended.

That is why, in this telling, the people of Ayodhya and the east keep the same fast at the same time. The Sun is the god of Rama's family, the Raghus, the house of the Sun. The fast ties the homecoming of Diwali to the worship six days later.

Women sing as they carry their baskets to the ghats, and in some of the songs Sita is there among them, carrying her own basket or standing in the water beside them to ask the Sun for a son. The songs call on the Sun to rise quickly and to look kindly on the women who have waited for him all night in the cold water. The singers do not ask where Sita kept her fast. They keep it with her.