The meeting between Rama and his long-lost queen is a highly dramatic and unexpected scene. Instead of Rama folding his darling in his arms, as one might have expected he would have done, after all his piteous laments about her loss and his often expressed desire to possess his peerless wife once more, we find him coldly repulsing her, on the ground of her long captivity in Ravana’s power. More than that, he cruelly tells her that it was not love for her, but a desire to vindicate his outraged honour, that had brought him to Lanka. Quite unprepared for this undeserved and heartless reception, poor Vaidehi asks her husband most touchingly if the past is all forgotten, if her love and unfaltering devotion have quite faded from his memory? And, waxing sadly indignant, she requests Lakshmana, in a voice broken with sobs, to prepare a funeral pile for her, the only refuge she had left to her in her dark despair. With Rama’s tacit consent the pyre was erected and ignited. Boldly did the virtuous queen enter the flames, and as she fell overpowered by them a cry of grief rose from the bystanders. At this important moment a band of celestial beings, headed by Brahma himself, appeared before the assembled multitude and revealed to Rama his true nature, that he was Vishnu and no mortal man, while the god of fire raised Sita out of the flames, and, publicly attesting her purity, restored her to Rama, who now joyfully received her back to his heart and home. Before the gods departed to their celestial abodes, Indra, at Rama’s considerate request, restored to life all the Vanars who had fallen in his cause. Thus was the great war brought to a conclusion. Rama now proceeded to Ayodhya, carried aloft through the clouds, over sea and land, in the famous magic car _Pushpak_, already referred to. With the returning hero went Sita and Lakshmana, the Vanar chiefs and Vibhishana too. After a meeting with his brother Bharata, who came forth with joy to welcome him back, Rama assumed the government of Dasahratha’s kingdom, and reigned over it for ten thousand years.[42]