śrī bharata kavacam (ānanda rāmāyaṇa)

An armour for Bharata from the Ananda Ramayana, spoken by Agastya, and it is unusual simply in existing: hymns to Rama's brothers are rare and armours to them rarer. Its meditation fixes him in a posture rather than describing his body — Kaikeyi's son, dark, his eyes fixed on Raghu's best, devoted to the word of the husband of Videha's daughter, standing at Sita's lord's left side and fanning him with a chowrie held in his right hand — so what is meditated on is a man in attendance. The viniyoga makes his relationships into the working parts of the mantra: the conch is the seed, Kaikeyi's son the power, the lord of Bharatakhanda the pin, Rama's younger brother the weapon, and the servant of the lord of the seven continents the armour itself.