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Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa 2.57.31

Ayodhyā Kāṇḍa, sarga 57: Daśaratha’s arrow aimed at a sound. He recalls mistaking a filling pot for an elephant and shooting a youth who directs him to his blind parents

In the sequence: he directed Daśaratha to his parents' hermitage and asked him to confess and seek their forgiveness → he also asked him to remove the arrow, explaining that his father was a Vaiśya and his mother a Śūdra, to relieve the prince's fear of having killed a brāhmaṇa → Daśaratha drew it out, and the youth gasped from the wound.

2.57.31

tau nūnaṃ durbalāv andhau matpratīkṣau pipāsitau
ciram āśākṛtāṃ tṛṣṇāṃ kaṣṭāṃ saṃdhārayiṣyataḥ

'Those two feeble blind ones, awaiting me and parched, will long endure their grievous thirst, sustained only by hope.'

Words: tau — those two; nūnaṃ — surely; durbalāv — feeble; andhau — blind; matpratīkṣau — awaiting me; pipāsitau — thirsting, parched; ciram — for long; āśākṛtāṃ — wrought by hope; tṛṣṇāṃ — thirst; kaṣṭāṃ — grievous, painful; saṃdhārayiṣyataḥ — the two will endure, sustain

Composed by Maharṣi Vālmīki. 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.