¹ Technical note: Ghnanti is derived from the verb han which has the following meanings according to Monier-Williams: to strike, hit, beat; to strike down, kill, slay, destroy; to wound, hurt, injure, harass, afflict; to overcome, overthrow, overturn, conquer; to remove, take away, counteract, cure; to obstruct, stop, hinder, impede, mar; to go, move. “To kill” is the fifth possible meaning of han. In the context of the current verse, if ghnanti were to be translated as “kill,” it would make no sense to say that the archer kings do so to play with the deer (play with their dead bodies?). Rather, it means that such kings strike those deer, either to kill them for their flesh (māṁsa-hetoḥ) or to play with them alive. Here Sītā-devī desired to take the living deer to Ayodhyā for her to play with. But because māṁsa also means “a royal item of enjoyment,” māṁsa-hetoḥ also indicates that such archer kings attack deer to procure royal items of enjoyment from the forest. But why would they do so? They do so to restrain deer who obstruct them in their pursuit of such items of royal enjoyment. See the appendix to Rāmāyaṇa Canto 2 Volume 5 entitled “Additional notes” as well as the footnote to the next verse.