¹ Sītā-devī’s point is that there is no question of Lakṣmaṇa’s protecting her if her husband’s life is in danger—in which case she didn’t want to live at all. As a point of comparison, we notice that at the end of Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s magical mausala-līlā as recounted in the Eleventh Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the queens of Dvārakā displayed the pastime of entering into fire. Rāmāyaṇa-bhūṣaṇa: saṁśayaṁ prāṇa-saṁśayam. Technical note: mad-rakṣaṇena prayojanaṁ nāsti. śrī-rāmaṁ vinā ahaṁ kṣaṇam api na jīviṣyāmīti bhāvaḥ.

¹ However, Śrī Lakṣmaṇa’s point will be that Mother Sītā’s very premise that Rāma’s life is in danger is false, for there was no evidence to support it. Even fourteen thousand rākṣasas could do nothing to Rāmacandra—and this was personally witnessed by both Sītā-devī and Lakṣmaṇa; then how could a few rākṣasas who couldn’t just pop out of thin air—they have to physically travel from one place to another in some physical form or another—neutralize Śrī Rāma? And where was the evidence that there were rākṣasas by the thousands surrounding Him or following Him at that particular point in time? So, prima facie, there was no question of any danger to Lord Rāma’s life. Apart from that, in His entire life, up to that point in time, He had never ever lost a battle. This was just a simple fact. If Śrī Rāma’s life were to be in danger, then Lakṣmaṇa would have to go to rescue Him, failing which a charge of immoral intentions and the like could be reasonably taken up for consideration. But that “if” statement hadn’t been proven to be true till then. Therefore, Sītā-devī’s jumping to unnecessary conclusions here in the Rāmāyaṇa should be understood to be her way of mocking independently-minded angry women, especially when we take into account the explicit evidence from Kūrma Purāṇa that only Māyā Sītā was kidnapped by Rāvaṇa. Let us now examine how Śrī Lakṣmaṇa intelligently deals with Sītā-devī’s irrational accusations.