At Citrakūṭa

Vasiṣṭha went with Bharata and the queens to the forest and found Rāma on the hill of Citrakūṭa. There Bharata begged Rāma to come back and rule, and Rāma refused, holding to his father's word, and when the brahmin Jābāli argued that a father is nothing to his son and there is no world beyond this one, so that Rāma should take the kingdom, and Rāma grew angry, Vasiṣṭha spoke. Jābāli said it only to turn you back, he told Rāma.

Then he told him the line of his house from the beginning: how all was ocean and Brahmā arose and raised the earth, and how from Brahmā came Marīci, and from him Kaśyapa, and from him Vivasvān, and from him Manu, and from him Ikṣvāku, the first king of Ayodhyā, and so on, king after king, down to Raghu, from whom the house is called the Rāghavas, and on to Aja and to Daśaratha. You are his eldest son, Rāma, he said. Among all the Ikṣvākus the eldest becomes king. You must not break this ancient custom of the Rāghavas. Take your kingdom and protect the people.

Then he spoke to him as his teacher. In this world, Rāma, a man has three teachers: the teacher who instructs him, his father and his mother. A father gives a man his body, but the teacher gives him understanding, and so he is called guru. I am the teacher of your father and of you. If you do as I say, you will not leave the path of the good. Here are your assemblies, your guilds and your elders; and here is your aged mother, who keeps dharma. Do not turn from her word. Grant Bharata's plea, and you will be true to yourself.

Rāma answered him gently. What a father and a mother do for their child, he said, the gifts they give, the bathing and clothing, the kind words, the care of raising him, can never be easily repaid. My father Daśaratha gave me his command, and it must not be made false. Then, at Vasiṣṭha's word, Rāma gave Bharata his golden sandals to keep the kingdom safe in his place, and Bharata went back to Ayodhyā carrying them on his head, and Vasiṣṭha with him. Years later, when Rāma had won back his wife Sītā from Laṅkā, the city of the rākṣasa king Rāvaṇa, who had carried her off, and had come home, Vasiṣṭha was among those who consecrated him king.