Māyā Sītā (Chāyā Sītā)

The motif of Māyā Sītā is not present in the oldest recension of the Rāmāyaṇa (Valmiki). It first appears in later literature, with the Kurma Purāṇa (c. 6th–9th century CE) attested as an early witness. The motif is expanded in the Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa (part of the Brahmanda Purāṇa), and in bhakti-period retellings such as Tulsīdās’s Ramcharitmanas. In these recensions a divine agent (frequently the fire-god Agni, or Rama acting with foreknowledge) creates an ontological illusory likeness of Sītā — Māyā Sītā — which is taken by Rāvaṇa so that the real Sītā can be sheltered in the refuge of Agni or otherwise preserved. The development of the motif is commonly read as a theological and devotional intervention to protect Sītā’s chastity and to assert Rama’s divinity and foreknowledge within later Vaiṣṇava readings of the epic.

Primary sources and summaries do not give a distinct physical description for Māyā Sītā; she is described as indistinguishable from the real Sītā and functions precisely because she appears to be Sītā to other characters (for example Rāvaṇa). No separate morphology, attributes, or unique visual markers are recorded in the cited materials — the point of the motif is ontological indistinguishability rather than distinctive form.

Māyā Sītā is an ontological illusion created by divine agency rather than an autonomous, volitional being. Textual witnesses describe her being produced by Agni or arranged by Rama; in that created state she can be seized and imprisoned by Rāvaṇa and thereby 'stand in' for Sītā during the abduction and captivity episodes. She does not exercise independent magical initiative in the sources; her roles are passive and functional (enduring abduction, imprisonment, and in some recensions undergoing disposal in the Agni-parīkṣā). Accounts vary about her fate: some texts state the illusory double is destroyed in the flames of the Agni-parīkṣā, while other traditions narrate that she is blessed and reborn as another figure (for example Draupadī or goddess Padmāvatī). These variant outcomes are explicit divergences across Purāṇic and bhakti-literary traditions.