What is Panchavati?

Ram, Sita and Lakshman had been in the forest a long time when they came to the rishi Agastya. Agastya knew who they were before they said a word. He blessed them, and he said something about Sita that people still repeat — that she had come into the forest out of love for her husband when she was not made for hardship, and that wherever the three of them lived would be famous for it.

Ram asked him for a place with trees and plenty of water where they could live in peace. Agastya thought for a moment and said: Panchavati. There is fruit there, and roots, and deer, and it is close to the Godavari. Sita will be happy there. Go past the madhuka wood and the fig grove, over the ridge of hills, and you will see it, all in flower.

They set off, the two brothers with their bows and Sita between them. On the way they met a huge old vulture in the trees who said he was their father’s friend. His name was Jatayu. He told Ram he would live near them and watch over Sita whenever the brothers were out, and Ram, who had heard his father speak of him, held him and said yes.

When they reached Panchavati Ram looked about and chose the spot himself — a flat piece of ground with trees all round it and the river close by, wide and slow, with lotuses on it and deer coming down to drink. He took Lakshman’s hand and said, build it here. Lakshman had just told him that if Ram lived a hundred years he would still be his servant, and he built the hut with his own hands. Mud walls on a frame of long bamboos. A roof of shami branches, reeds and leaves. The floor beaten level. When it was done he went down to the Godavari and bathed, came back with lotuses and fruit, did the small rites you do for a new house, and only then brought Ram to see it.

Ram looked at it and held his brother to his chest. I am pleased with you, he said. As long as you are alive, with all this care in you, our father is not dead.

And they lived there. The rains came and went. Rishis from the forest came to the hut, sat, ate, talked and went back. Jatayu was somewhere in the trees. In winter the three of them walked down to the river before sunrise, through frost and mist so thick you could hear the cranes but not see them, Lakshman behind Ram carrying the water pot and talking about Bharat back in Ayodhya. They bathed in the Godavari, gave water to the gods and to their ancestors, and walked back up to the hut. It was the one stretch of the exile that was actually peaceful.

What ended it — the morning Shurpanakha came out of the trees — is told whole on Tapovan. What came after — the golden deer, the sadhu at the door, the empty hut — is told whole on Sita Gufa. The Ramayana connection has all of it in one place.

This is what Nashik tells.

Before it was Nashik, the whole of this place was Panchavati. Five banyan trees gave it the name. Near the Kalaram temple there are still some very old, very tall banyans, and people believe they grew from those five. The hut was here, on this bank. The cave where Ram hid Sita when he had to leave her is here, a short walk from the banyans. And the pool where Ram bathed is here at the river — Ramkund.

The old part of Panchavati lies between two small streams that come down into the Godavari, the Aruna at one end and the Varuna at the other. The Aruna joins the river at Ramkund.

The bank is lined with temples, and the lanes behind it are full of them. Two have a page of their own. The Kalaram temple is the temple of Ram, named for its black image of him, and it is where most people go first. The Kapaleshwar temple is the temple of Shiva on the rise above Ramkund, where no Nandi sits before the ling. The Ganga Godavari temple, Sunder Narayan’s, Naroshankar’s, Talkuteshwar’s and the rest are on the temples of Nashik.

Sita Gufa is the cave, near the Kalaram temple. And Ramkund is the pool at the river’s edge, on this bank, where the rites for the dead are performed through the year. The bathing places along the bed of the river run upstream and downstream of it, and the tirthas on the Godavari has them.

Start at the Kalaram temple. Nearly everything else is within a few minutes’ walk of it. The old banyans are close by, and so is Sita Gufa — a small opening at the foot of a narrow flight of steps, with Ram, Sita and Lakshman inside. Then go down to the river.

Ramkund is where the bank opens out. The steps go down into the water on this side, and this is where you will see families with a priest, sitting at the water’s edge, doing the rites for someone they have lost — the offering of water, the balls of rice, the names said out loud. If that is what you have come for, Ramkund says what happens there. If you have come for the story, stand on the steps and look across. The river is wide here, and the other bank is the newer city. The Ramayana’s Panchavati was a forest with a river running past it and deer coming down to drink, and from the steps at Ramkund, with the town behind you, you can still see why Agastya sent them here.

Downstream, a little way along this bank, is Tapovan.