तं दृष्ट्वा शत्रुहन्तारं महर्षीणां सुखावहम्।
बभूव हृष्टा वैदेही भर्तारं परिषस्वजे॥
taṁ dṛṣṭvā śatru-hantāraṁ maha-rṣīṇāṁ sukhāvaham
babhūva hṛṣṭā vaidehī bhartāraṁ pariṣasvaje
tam = Him; dṛṣṭvā = upon seeing; śatru-hantāram = who had killed His enemies; mahā-ṛṣīṇām = to the great sages; sukha-āvaham = and who had brought happiness; babhūva = became; hṛṣṭā = ecstatic; vaidehī = Vaidehī; bhartāram = her husband; pariṣasvaje = and she embraced.
Upon seeing Him who had killed His enemies and who had brought happiness to the great sages, Vaidehī became ecstatic and she embraced her husband.1
1 In other words, when Vaidehī noticed that her husband had killed His enemies and brought happiness to the great sages, she ecstatically embraced Him. Just as pure devotees of the Lord and His internal potency are happy when They are happy, the Lord and His internal potency are happy when Their devotees are happy. The Supreme Personality of Godhead thus reveals the extent to which He and His pure devotees perpetually and selflessly love each other. Such perpetual and selfless love cannot be found in this world.
1 Rāmāyaṇa-bhūṣaṇa: pūrvaṁ mahā-samare adṛśyatayā sthitaṁ idānīṁ dṛṣṭvā.
2 This is how Lord Rāmacandra presented Himself. See the note to text 3.25.13.
3 Rāmāyaṇa-bhūṣaṇa: darśana-prakāram āha śatru-hantāraṁ hanana-vyāpāre karma-bhāvaḥ śatrūṇām. svasya tu kartṛ-bhāva eva.
4 “Attained existence” in this context naturally means “attained functional existence.”
5 Rāmāyaṇa-bhūṣaṇa: bhū prāptāv ity asmāl liṭi vyatyayena parasmaipadam. bhartāraṁ vijayinam ālokya sarabhasaṁ guhāntarād āgatety arthaḥ.
6 “The possessor of the quality [known as ecstasy]” is Lord Rāma who is always in ecstatic pleasure. When Sītā-devī attained Him, she also became ecstatic. The idea is this: Lord Rāma is naturally all-pleasing. Therefore, Mother Sītā naturally became pleased when she was with Him.
7 In the commentary, only mithilādhipatir vīraḥ appears. The entire verse has been placed here to aid clarity.
8 Bhartāram has two meanings. The first meaning is “husband” and the second meaning is “maintainer.” The first meaning is taken into consideration in the first sentence of this paragraph. The second meaning is set out in the current sentence.
9 Rāmāyaṇa-bhūṣaṇa: hṛdaya-guhāgato jīvaḥ paratantraḥ ācārya-mukhena parama-śeṣiṇaṁ dṛṣṭvā tena sakala-virodhi-varge nivartite tato nirgatya nitya-sūri-pariṣad-āsīnaṁ śeṣiṇam āsādya tad-bhoga-parivāham anubabhūveti dhvanyate.
Tam dṛṣṭvā. She couldn’t see Him standing during [this] great battle, [but] she saw Him now.1 She saw Him as described below:
vīra-vraṇena vigalad-rudhireṇa roma-
kūpollasadbhir api gharma-payaḥ-kaṇaughaiḥ
kodaṇḍa-daṇḍam avalambya vinīya varma
kiñcit-pariśramabhṛtaṁ priyam īkṣamāṇā
“[Sītā-devī stood] watching her beloved husband who had heroic wounds, blood oozing out, His hair standing on end and drops of perspiration. He [stood] with the support of His bow and had removed His armor. He was slightly tired.”2
His hair had been unmatted because of the [great battle with the rākṣasas]. His girdle was bound tight. His quivers rested on His shoulders. The fire of His anger had been extinguished by the time the battle was over. With a smiling face, He looked at the path taken by Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa while attentively [considering], “Will the rākṣasas come again?” Previously He was famous as a hero. Now He had fulfilled the obligations of a hero and she noticed that.
What did she see Him doing? The author states that next.
Śatru-hantāram means “killer of His enemies.”3 In other words, she saw Him killing [the rākṣasas]; she didn’t see Him fixing the arrows [to His bow] and so on. The word śatru (“enemies”) indicates that even in the presence of the assemblies of devas, gandharvas and so on, He only killed His enemies. It is thus stated that Lord Rāma suppressed the miscreants.
The author [then] states that Rāmacandra protected the civilized: maha-rṣīṇāṁ sukhāvaham [which implies that He brought happiness to the great sages.”] Though the great sages were capable of killing [the rākṣasas] by a little bit of their ascetic [powers], they simply depended on Rāma’s promise [to kill the rākṣasas, for] the sages waited for Rāma to carry out His function of protecting them [with the thought], “Let there be no harm to [His] constitutional position of being [our] protector and to [our] constitutional position of being protected [by Him].”
Rāmacandra had [thus] brought them happiness after preventing [them from experiencing] even a trace of the distress mentioned in text 3.6.16:
ehi paśya śarīrāṇi munīnāṁ bhāvitātmanām
hatānāṁ rākṣasair ghorair bahūnāṁ bahudhā vane
“Come and see the bodies of the many sages who had meditated on their selves. [These bodies] were destroyed by terrible rākṣasas in the forest in many ways.”
Babhūva (“became”) indicates that Sītā-devī had now gained her very existence; she was [previously] devoid of her existence because Rāma was alone amidst the aggression of a larger number of enemies. Since Lord Rāma, the very life of the universe, attained existence, she also attained existence. It is [further] implied that in accordance with the scriptural statement that a wife is a man’s very self (ātmā vai puruṣasya dārāḥ), when Rāma attained existence, she also attained existence.4
Babhūva can also mean “she came.” Noticing her victorious husband, she hurried out of the cave [in the mountain].5
Hṛṣṭā (“ecstatic”) indicates that after she attained the possessor of the quality [known as ecstasy], she attained that very quality that naturally belonged to Him.6 This is in line with the maxim, sati dharmiṇi dharmāś [cintyante], “One deliberates on the properties of an object only if the object exists [in the first place].” Her hair stood on end, sprouting her internal love [for Him].
The reason for her being pleased by observing His heroism is indicated [by the word] vaidehī (“Vaidehī”). In other words, Sītā-devī was born from a noble family of heroes as noted in text 2.118.27:
mithilādhipatir vīro janako nāma dharmavit
kṣatra-dharme hy abhirato nyāyataḥ śāsti medinīm
“There is a heroic ruler of Mithilā named Janaka who knows dharma and who justly rules over the earth, absorbed in the dharma of the kṣatriyas.”7
Bhartāraṁ pariṣasvaje (“and she embraced her husband”) indicates that she herself embraced Him upon being overwhelmed by the weight of such boundless love. Bhartāram indicates that He is the maintainer of the [entire] world.8 As the mother of all the worlds, she embraced Him upon seeing that all the creatures had been protected. Pariṣasvaje indicates that she fully embraced Him.
Maha-rṣīṇāṁ sukhāvahaṁ pariṣasvaje [meaning “She embraced Him who had brought happiness to the great sages”] indicates that just as a wife is happy with her husband out of affection for their sons when her husband does good to them, she embraced Him upon being pleased with [His] protection of the sages.
Sītā-devī had gone to the cave without Lord Rāma; then she came out [of that cave] and embraced Him after He had neutralized all of their enemies. This hints at the following: When the dependent jīvātmā who has come to the cave of the heart sees his supreme shelter through a bona fide ācārya, and gets out of that [cave of the heart] when all obstacles are destroyed by that supreme shelter, he approaches that shelter when He is sitting with His eternal associates and overwhelmingly relishes His association.9
This verse is clarified in the next two verses.