śrī jānakījīvanāṣṭakam

Eight verses that never once name the one they praise. Every verse closes on the same line, I bow to the life of Janaki, so that Rama is addressed throughout by his relation to Sita and by nothing else, which is why the hymn belongs with her. Each verse picks a moment in which he acts against his own interest. He goes to the forest on hearing the king's word although the king never ordered him, and comes away untouched by either gladness or grief; seeing Jatayu brought low he forgets his own sorrow at the loss of his wife; he sets Sugriva on the monkeys' throne while his own heart is still burning. The fifth turns it round and gives Sita the same standing, saying it was by meditating on him that Videha's daughter kept herself alive in the demons' grove. The last calls all of it a strange play made by a man of maya under the pretext of being a king.