Bharata

About Bharata

Bharata (भरतः) — son of King Dasharatha and Queen Kaikeyi, half-brother to Rama — is the moral centrepiece of the Ayodhya Kanda, and one of the most unambiguous examples of dharma in the entire epic. When Kaikeyi's two boons place Bharata on the throne and send Rama to the forest, Bharata is away in his maternal grandfather's kingdom of Kekaya. Returning to Ayodhya, he discovers his father dead of grief and his brother exiled — and rather than accept the crown his mother schemed for, he denounces her, renounces the throne absolutely, and marches to the forest with an army to bring Rama back.

At Chitrakoot, Bharata pleads with Rama for fourteen days to return to Ayodhya; Rama refuses, citing his father's word. Bharata then takes from Rama a pair of wooden pāduka (sandals) — places them on the throne of Ayodhya — and rules for fourteen years not as king but as regent, himself living in the village of Nandigrama, wearing bark, eating the food of an ascetic, and administering the kingdom in Rama's name alone. The 'pāduka-rājya' (sandal-kingdom) of Bharata is one of the Ramayana's most profound images: the true king is the one who refuses the throne he has been unjustly given.

After Rama's return, Bharata is first to run out and receive the Pushpaka Vimana at Nandigrama. He renounces nothing, gains nothing; he merely returns to being his brother's servant. In the Uttara Kanda he fathers two sons, Taksha and Pushkala, who later found the cities of Takshashila (Taxila, in modern Pakistan) and Pushkalavati (near modern Peshawar) — placing the Ikshvaku legacy on the far northwestern frontier of ancient Bharat. Bharata's bhrātṛ-bhakti (brotherly devotion) remains the standard against which all other sibling relationships in the tradition are measured.