Rāma in the Hermitage

Rāma, the prince of Ayodhyā, had gone into the forest for fourteen years to keep the word his father, King Daśaratha, had given. In those years Rāma left Citrakūṭa. His brother Bharata had come to him there with their father's queens, Rāma's mothers, and with the people of the city, and there the memory of them would not leave him. So he came with Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa to the hermitage of Atri. He bowed to the sage, and Atri received him as a father receives a son.

Atri saw to their welcome himself and made sure they were honoured in every way, and he spoke kindly to Lakṣmaṇa and to Sītā. Then he called his wife, the old and revered Anasūyā, and said to her, Receive Sītā into your care. And he told Rāma about her: how once, when the world was scorched by a drought that lasted ten years, it was she who brought forth roots and fruits, and made the Gaṅgā flow; how she had practised great austerity for ten thousand years, and every obstacle turned away from her; how once, when a faithful wife's word held back the sun for ten days, it was she who brought back the dawn, for the work of the gods. She is like a mother to you, he said. Let Sītā go to her.

That faithful wife was a brahmin's wife whose husband had been cursed to die at sunrise; she had said that the sun would not rise, and it did not.

Sītā went to Anasūyā, and that evening she came back to Rāma dressed in the garments and ornaments the old woman had given her. Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa were glad of it. That night they rested in the hermitage, honoured by the seers, and in the morning they took leave of the sages and went on into the great forest. The sages blessed them for the journey and showed them the path the seers used when they went for fruit, and warned them that the forest was full of rākṣasas, demons who prey on men.