← 1.45.16 · Bāla Kāṇḍa 45: Story of Indra & Diti: Service, broken observance and division · 1.45.18 →

Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa 1.45.17

Bāla Kāṇḍa, sarga 45: Story of Indra & Diti: Service, broken observance and division. Diti seeks a son to kill Indra, he serves her during her observance and exploits her sleeping posture to enter her body and divide the fetus into seven

In the sequence: Indra regards this as a lapse in the required purity and seizes the opportunity → he enters her body and cuts the fetus into seven with his thunderbolt

1.45.17

tasyāḥ śarīravivaraṃ viveśa ca puraṃdaraḥ
garbhaṃ ca saptadhā rāma bibheda paramātmavān

And Puraṃdara (Indra) entered the opening of her body and, most self-possessed, split the fetus sevenfold, O Rāma.

Words: tasyāḥ — of her, her; śarīravivaraṃ — the opening of the body; viveśa — entered; ca — and; puraṃdaraḥ — Puraṃdara (Indra, breaker of citadels); garbhaṃ — the fetus, embryo; ca — and; saptadhā — sevenfold, into seven; rāma — O Rāma; bibheda — split, cleft; paramātmavān — most self-possessed

Composed by Maharṣi Vālmīki, the ādikavi of the ādikāvya: the first poet of the first poem. Sanskrit: The Vālmīki-Rāmāyaṇa: Critical Edition, Oriental Institute, Baroda, 1960–1975 (gen. eds. G. H. Bhatt, U. P. Shah); IAST from GRETIL (Göttingen). Translation and word glosses: Claude Opus 4.6–4.7; summaries and sequences: ChatGPT Astra (machine-made). Numbering follows the Critical Edition, not the vulgate (e.g. Gita Press, valmikiramayan.net), so sarga and verse numbers can differ from those editions.