"It is this burning agony which is ever consuming my breast, so that I feel no appetite by day and get no sleep at night. For this fell disease there is no remedy: I have mentally ransacked the whole world. My mother’s evil counsel was like a sinful carpenter, who used my interests as an adze and fashioned out of the inauspicious wood of discord a destructive magical contrivance and muttering the terrible malevolent spell of (Ýr¶ RŒma’s) exile for a fixed term (of fourteen years) planted it (in the soil of AyodhyŒ).* It is for my sake that she employed this infamous contrivance and brought ruin on the whole world. This calamity will cease only when Ýr¶ RŒma returns; by no other means can AyodhyŒ thrive again." The sage (BharadvŒja) was gratified to hear Bharata’s words and everyone applauded him in ways more than one. "Grieve not much, dear child; all your woes will disappear the moment you behold Ýr¶ RŒma’s feet." (1—4)