The Shambuka episode appears in the Uttara Kanda, the last book of the Ramayana, which many scholars and many Hindus regard as a later addition — the same book contains Sita's banishment. In it, a brahmin brings his dead son to Rama's court and blames the death on adharma somewhere in the kingdom; the sage Narada identifies the cause as a shudra performing tapas, which the treta yuga does not permit. Rama searches, finds Shambuka hanging upside down over a fire, confirms his caste, and kills him, at which the child revives and the gods approve. It is the single most cited passage in the anti-caste critique of Hinduism. Defenders argue interpolation, or read it allegorically, or note that other recensions handle it differently. It has also been rewritten repeatedly from inside the tradition: Bhavabhuti dramatised it in the eighth century with visible discomfort, and twentieth-century Tamil, Marathi and Malayalam writers have staged it as a straightforward indictment, some of them prosecuted for doing so.