Sita (Sanskrit: सीता; "Sītā", also spelled Seeta) is the wife of Rama, the seventh avatāra of Vishnu, and is esteemed an exemplar of womanly and wifely virtue. According to Hindu belief, Sita was an avatāra of Lakshmi, Vishnu's consort, who chose to reincarnate herself on Earth as Sita and endure an arduous life, to provide humankind an example of good virtues. Sita is one of the principal characters in the Ramayana, a Hindu epic named after her husband Rama.
Sita was a foundling, discovered in a furrow in a ploughed field, and for that reason is regarded as a daughter of Bhudevi, the earth Goddess. She was found and adopted by Janaka, king of Mithila and his wife Sunayana. Upon her coming of age, a swayamwara was held to select a suitable husband for her, and she was wed to Rama, prince of Ayodhya, an avatara of Vishnu.
Some time after the wedding, circumstances became such that Rama felt it his duty to leave Ayodhya and spend a period of exile in the forests of Dandakaranya. At this time, he was 25, Sita 18 and his brother Lakshmana 16. Sita willingly renounced the comforts of the palace and joined her husband in braving the travails of exile, even living in a forest. Worse was however to come; the forest was the scene for the abduction of Sita by Ravana, King of Lanka, one of her former suitors. Ravana kidnapped Sita while her husband was away fetching a magnificent golden deer to please her ( this deer was actually Ravana's demon uncle, Mareecha, in disguise). Jatayu, the vulture-king, who was a friend of Rama, tried to protect her, but Ravana chopped off his wings. Jatayu survived long enough to inform Rama of what had happened.
The couple returned to Ayodhya, where Rama was crowned king with Sita by his side. While the trust and affection in which Rama held his wife never wavered, it soon became evident that a (perhaps small) section of the citizenry of Ayodhya found the fact of Sita's long residence in captivity, under the power of Ravana, a circumstance difficult to accept. The story goes that an intemperate washerman, while berating his wayward wife, declared that he was "no pusillanimous Rama who would take his wife back after she had lived in the house of another man". This calumnious comment was reported back to Rama, who knew that the aspersion cast on Sita was entirely baseless; nevertheless, he felt his position as ruler undermined by the constant possibility of slander attaching itself to his hitherto unimpeachable dynasty and personal reign. It was this train of thought that led Rama to desire the removal of Sita from his household.
Sita was thus again in exile; she was not only alone this time but also pregnant. She sought refuge in the hermitage of the sage Valmiki, where she was delivered of twin sons, Lava and Kusha.
Sita raised her sons single-handedly in the hermitage. They grew up to be valiant and intelligent and were eventually united with their father. Once she had witnessed the acceptance of her children by Rama, Sita sought final refuge in the arms of her mother Bhumidevi, the Earth Goddess. Hearing her plea for release from an unjust world and from a life that had rarely been happy, the earth dramatically split open; Bhumidevi manifested herself and took Sita away to a better world.
This part of the epic has been disputed. Sages point to it being written later than the Valmiki Ramayan. Some believe that this part of the story, Luv-Kushkanda, was promoted by the British. Many Hindu organizations today disown Luv-Kush kanda and state that after Ram is crowned king there is Ram rajya, when everyone is happy.
Sita also took part in the Hindu ritual of Ashvamedha. As narrated in the Uttara Kanda (book 7). In this narrative, Rama was married to a single wife, Sita, who at the time was not with him, having been excluded from Rama's capital of Ayodhya. She was therefore represented by a statue for the queen's ceremony (7.x[citation needed]). Sita was living in Valmiki's forest ashram with her twin children by Rama, Lava and Kusha, whose birth was unknown to Rama. In its wanderings, the horse, accompanied by an army and the monkey-king Hanuman, enters the forest and encounters Lava, who ignores the warning written on the horse's headplate not to hinder its progress. He tethers the horse, and with Kusha challenges the army, which is unable to defeat the brothers.
Ravana held her captive in his distant island realm. In captivity, Sita not only consistently rejected the many advances of her powerful and royal captor, but also preserved her chastity of mind, never once wavering in her adherence to her husband. She was finally rescued by her husband Rama, who waged a tremendous battle to defeat Ravana and secure the release of Sita.
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