Book 3 · Utpatti उत्पत्ति · chapters 104–121 · 18 chapters
King Lavana (a righteous king descended from Harishchandra), the illusionist Shambarika sent by Indra, a Chandala (outcaste) woman and her father Pulkasa whom the king takes as family inside the vision, with sage Vasishtha narrating to Rama as witness.
Vasishtha tells Rama a story he saw with his own eyes. At the court of the righteous king Lavana, a magician called Shambarika appears, sent by Indra to trouble a king who is performing the Rajasuya sacrifice. In an instant, before the whole assembly, Lavana falls into a trance. Coming out of it, shaken and confused, he tells the court what he experienced: while out hunting he was carried far away, lost his horse in a wasteland, and was taken in by a Chandala girl who fed him only after he agreed to marry her. He lived for years as her husband among outcastes, working, fathering children, growing old and impoverished, and at last, during a famine so severe his starving son begged to eat human flesh, he built a funeral pyre to end his life. As he was about to leap in, he heard a conch and war-cry and woke back in his own court, seconds after Shambarika had first appeared. Shambarika then vanished, and the court realized it had witnessed a display of the mind's power to create whole lifetimes in an instant. Later Lavana rides out to the real Vindhya forest and finds an actual village matching what he saw, whose people confirm a drought and losses like those in his vision, so that his dream is shown to answer to real events he could not otherwise have known.
तत्रास्ति लवणो नाम राजा परमधार्मिकः | हरिश्चन्द्रकुलोद्भूतो भूमाविव दिवाकरः || १२ ||
There, in that country, lives a king named Lavana, deeply righteous, born in the line of Harishchandra, shining on the earth like the sun.
उस देश में लवण नाम का एक राजा रहता है, जो बहुत धर्मात्मा है, हरिश्चंद्र के वंश में जन्मा है, और धरती पर सूर्य की तरह चमकता है।
ततस्तूर्यनिनादेन जयशब्देन बोधितः | इति शाम्बरिकेणायं मोह उत्पादितो मम || २१ ||
Then I was woken by the blast of trumpets and shouts of victory. This is how this illusion was created in me by the magician.
फिर तुरही की गूँज और जयजयकार की आवाज़ से मेरी नींद खुल गई। इस तरह जादूगर ने मुझमें यह भ्रम पैदा किया।
लवणोऽसौ महीपालस्तथा दृष्ट्वा तदा भ्रमम् | द्वितीये दिवसे गन्तुं प्रवृत्तस्तां महाटवीम् || २ ||
That king Lavana, after seeing that illusion, then set out on the second day to go into that great forest.
राजा लवण ने वह भ्रम देखकर, दूसरे दिन उस बड़े जंगल में जाने के लिए निकल पड़े।
The story occupies chapters 104–121 of Book 3. Each link opens that chapter complete — Sanskrit in Devanagari and IAST, with a plain English and Hindi translation of every verse. The number under each link is its verse count.
The narrative itself is told in chapters 104 to 109, and its confirming epilogue in 120 and 121. The chapters between are Vasishtha's teaching on what Lavana's vision shows.