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The Great Epics

The Sleep She Took So He Would Not Have To

Lakshmana’s most famous feat, the killing of Indrajit, rests on a condition he could only meet because his wife took his sleep.

Valmiki gives her two lines.

She is married to Lakshmana in the Bala Kanda, alongside her sister Sita's marriage to Rama.

And after that the great Sanskrit Ramayana does not mention Urmila again. Not when her husband leaves for fourteen years. Not when he returns. She is a name in a wedding list.

And the tradition would not accept it.

What the folk Ramayanas did

The story everyone knows is that Urmila slept for fourteen years, so that Lakshmana would not have to.

It is not in Valmiki. And it is not in Tulsidas either. It comes from the folk and regional Ramayanas, and its best-known form is a Telugu women's song, the Urmiladevi Nidra, Urmila's Sleep.

The account it gives is this.

Read the whole story on Setu

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