sītā | सीता | sItA
sītā | सीता | f. (less correctly written ṣītā | षीता |; cf. sīma/n | सीम/न् |, sīra | सीर |) a furrow, the track or line of a ploughshare (also personified, and apparently once worshipped as a kind of goddess resembling Pomona; in RV. iv, 57, 6, Sītā is invoked as presiding over agriculture or the fruits of the earth; in VS. xii, 69-72, Sītā ‘the Furrow’ is again personified and addressed, four furrows being required to be drawn at the ceremony when the above stanzas are recited; in TBr. she is called sāvitrī | सावित्री |, and in PārGṛ. indra-patnī | इन्द्र-पत्नी |, ‘the wife of Indra’; in epic poetry S˚ is the wife of Rāmacandra and daughter of Janaka, king of Mithilā, capital of Videha, who was otherwise called Sīradhvaja; she was named Sītā because fabled to have sprung from a furrow made by Janaka while ploughing the ground to prepare it for a sacrifice instituted by him to obtain progeny, whence her epithet Ayoni-jā, ‘not womb-born’; her other common names, Maithilī and Vaidehī, are from the place of her birth; according to one legend she was Vedavatī q.v., in the Kṛta age; accord. to others she was an incarnation of Lakṣmi and of Umā; the story of Rāma's bending the bow, which was to be the condition of the gift of Sītā, is told in R. i, 67; Sītā's younger sister Urmilā was at the same time given to Lakṣmaṇa, and two nieces of Janaka, daughters of his brother king Kuśa-dhvaja, to Bharata and Śatrughna), RV. &c. &c., IW. 335 n. 1; 337 &c.
N. of a form of Dākṣāyaṇī, Cat.
of a poetess, Cat.
of a river, MBh.; R. &c.
of the eastern branch of the four mythical branches of the heavenly Ganges (into which it is supposed to divide after falling on mount Meru; this branch is fabled to flow into the Varṣa or Dvīpa called Bhadrāśva), L.
of an Upaniṣad, Cat.
spirituous liquor, W.
N. of a form of Dākṣāyaṇī, Cat.
of a poetess, Cat.
of a river, MBh.; R. &c.
of the eastern branch of the four mythical branches of the heavenly Ganges (into which it is supposed to divide after falling on mount Meru; this branch is fabled to flow into the Varṣa or Dvīpa called Bhadrāśva), L.
of an Upaniṣad, Cat.
spirituous liquor, W.