Book 5 · Upaśama उपशम · chapters 82–89 · 8 chapters
Vasishtha narrates to Rama the story of the sage Vitahavya, who is helped by Pingala (the sun's radiance) sent by the sun-god Surya
Vasishtha tells Rama of the sage Vitahavya, who withdrew into a cave in the Vindhya mountains, mastered his restless senses through inquiry, and sat in unbroken meditation. He remained motionless for three hundred years while storms and rain filled the cave with mud, burying his body up to the shoulders. Inwardly awake the whole time, his consciousness ranged freely and took on other forms and lifetimes elsewhere -- as a king, an Indra, a swan -- while his real body lay entombed. When he finally turned his attention back to his buried body, he found himself unable to move it, so he sent his awareness out in the form of wind into the sun, and asked the sun's attendant, Pingala, to go and lift his body out of the earth. Pingala did this, drawing the body out of the mud like a lotus stem, and Vitahavya re-entered it, bathed, and resumed his life in the forest. He meditated again for years, made a farewell address to his own body, desire, and sorrow, and eventually his body quietly withered away and he was freed from it entirely. Rama then asks why scavenging animals never touched the exposed body and how Vitahavya was freed from it so quickly; Vasishtha answers with general teaching on why a yogi's stilled body does not decay.
वीतहव्यो महातेजा विबभ्राम वने पुरा विन्ध्यशैलदरीर्दीर्घा रविर्मेरुदरीरिव || ४ ||
The great sage Vītahavya, of immense brilliance, wandered in the forest long ago, like the sun moving through the long caves of the Vindhya mountains.
महान ऋषि वीतहव्य, जिनकी चमक अपार थी, पहले वन में घूमते थे, जैसे सूर्य विंध्य पर्वत की लंबी गुफाओं में घूमता है।
शतत्रये स वर्षाणामथ याते स्वयंप्रभुः | व्यबुध्यतात्मरूपात्मा धराकोटरपीडितः || १७ ||
After three hundred years, he, the self-luminous one, awakened to his true self, oppressed by the earth's pit.
तीन सौ वर्षों के बाद, वह स्वयंप्रभु, अपने वास्तविक स्वरूप को जागृत हुआ, धरती के गड्ढे से पीड़ित।
तथैव तिष्ठन्निःस्पन्दः स कायो म्लानिमाययौ | अन्तर्विरसतां प्राप्य मार्गशीर्षान्तपद्मवत् || ३ ||
Thus remaining motionless, that body gradually withered away, having attained internal dissolution like a lotus at the end of the Margashirsha month.
इस प्रकार निश्चल रहते हुए, वह शरीर धीरे-धीरे सूख गया, मार्गशीर्ष महीने के अंत में कमल की तरह आंतरिक विलय प्राप्त करके।
The story occupies chapters 82–89 of Book 5. 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.