Prince Rama

That night, Rama could not sleep.

Outside, people were still stringing flowers, hanging cloth and rehearsing music. Lamplight flickered through a gap in the door, but its warmth did not reach the place where he sat. In the morning, he would be crowned. Yet he sat there alone. He did not know that this was his last night in his own palace.

Then someone came in and told him that everything had changed.

Kaikeyi, the third wife of King Dasharatha, had claimed two wishes. The king had once promised them to her, when she saved his life in a battle. The first wish was that her own son, Bharata, would take the throne. She loved Bharata as a mother loves her child. She wanted the best for him, even though the way she chose brought pain to others. The second wish was that Rama would go into the forest and live there for 14 years.

As the Valmiki Ramayana tells it, Rama now faced a choice. The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic, composed in Sanskrit.

He could refuse. He was the crown prince, and the people loved him. No one could force him.

But his father had made a promise. And a king's promise, whenever it was spoken, is still a promise. If Rama took the throne anyway, his father would be known as a man who broke his word. That was something Rama could not bear.

The next morning, he exchanged his royal silks for clothes made of tree bark. He walked out of the palace. Sita, his beloved wife, refused to stay behind. So did his younger brother, Lakshmana. The three of them passed through the city gate together, while the people stood weeping on both sides of the road.

This is what Hindus call dharma, moral virtue and righteous duty. Dharma is not obeying without thinking. It is understanding clearly what is most right, and choosing it, even at a cost to oneself.

Soon after, King Dasharatha died, because his grief was too great. When Bharata heard the news, he did not dare to sit on the throne. He went into the forest himself to find his brother and beg him to come home. Rama refused, because he did not want his father's word to become empty.

There was no other way. Bharata asked for Rama's sandals, carried them home and placed them on the throne.

And for 14 years, no one sat on that throne. Only the sandals rested there. That too was Bharata's own way of keeping dharma.

In the forest, Rama and Sita lived a simple life, among birdsong and running streams rather than ceremonial drums. Those were the most peaceful years of Rama's life.

Then Ravana appeared. The ten-headed demon king of the island of Lanka had seen Sita, and he carried her away. This was the greatest test of Rama's life. Losing Sita was not only losing a beloved wife. From then on, he had to show that his dharma would not give way to grief.

Rama made an alliance with Sugriva, king of the vanara monkeys, and with the extraordinary general Hanuman. Hanuman leapt across the ocean, searched the island of Lanka, and at last found Sita. And on the far side of the ocean, Rama waited. He waited with longing, and with faith that what is right would not be abandoned.

Ravana was defeated. Sita was rescued.

But the epic does not let the story end easily. Vietnamese students read this part in the tenth grade, in a textbook excerpt called Ra-ma buộc tội, which means Rama's accusation. In it, the trust between Rama and Sita was put through one more hard test, after they were together again. That passage is not easy to understand, and not pleasant. Even grown-ups fall quiet for a long time after reading it. But Sita came through it, by her own steadfastness.

When it was all over, Rama and Sita returned to Ayodhya.

The story goes that the people of Ayodhya lit thousands of oil lamps in every window, every doorstep and every street. Light spread across the capital through the dark night. Many Hindus link that celebration to Diwali, the festival of lights. Today it is one of the largest festivals in the world. Every year, many Hindus light lamps to celebrate the day Rama came home.

The image of this prince reached the land that is now Vietnam very early. The Trà Kiệu altar is a stone carving by the ancient Cham people, made around the 7th or 8th century. It comes from the land of Trà Kiệu, in what is now the city of Da Nang. Some researchers read one face of the altar as the bow contest at Mithila. It is the moment when Rama breaks Pinaka, the divine bow, to win the hand of Sita. In 2012, the stone was recognized as a National Treasure. It is now kept in the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang.

At the Khương Mỹ towers, in what is now the city of Da Nang, the researcher Trần Kỳ Phương has also recorded reliefs of the monkey army. They show the monkeys building a stone bridge to the island of Lanka to rescue Sita. The Cham are a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa. The ancient Cham did not only know this story. They carved it into stone.

And every Diwali, when thousands of lamps are lit again, many Hindus remember the prince who once sat alone through that sleepless night, then walked out of his palace so that his father's promise would not become empty.