Dasharatha

Dasharatha went to the Sarayu with a bow, hoping to kill an elephant, a boar or another large animal. In the darkness he heard a pot being filled with water. The sound seemed to him like an elephant at the river. He chose an arrow and fired towards it. A human voice called out from the place where it landed. The wounded speaker asked why anyone would shoot at a hermit who had come only to draw water. He said he lived like a rishi, eating what the forest produced, and had renounced violence. He asked Dasharatha to remove the arrow and go quickly to his father’s hermitage.

Dasharatha reached the river bank and saw a young ascetic lying with an arrow through his heart, taking his last breath. The young man was not an elephant, and Dasharatha had not seen his target before he fired. After asking him to remove the arrow, the ascetic told Dasharatha to inform his father. Dasharatha pulled the arrow from the boy’s body. Fear came over him as he understood what he had done. He went to the old couple and spoke plainly: he was the warrior Daśaratha, and he had killed their son. He explained that he had come armed to hunt and had mistaken the sound of the pot for an animal drinking. The young man’s request had sent him to the hermitage, but it could not undo the shot. Dasharatha’s account ended with a confession to the parents whose son had been drawing water at the river.