Near the end of the Rāmāyaṇa, Rāma returns to Ayodhyā to be installed as king after fourteen years of exile to the forest. His reign brings with it a long-awaited era of peace and prosperity. However, that peace is eventually disturbed when a Brahmin father brings the body of his dead son to the palace gates. The Brahmin questions how such a thing can happen, going so far as to accuse Rāma of failing to live up to his kingly responsibilities. Rāma becomes distressed and calls a meeting of his closest advisors. One among them, Nārada, explains to Rāma that when society loses sight of dharma as the ages progress, the birth-based system of societal segregation—the cāturvarṇya or system of four varṇas—begins to break down. By the time of the final age, known as the Kali Yuga, the lowest of these varṇas, the Śūdras, will begin to do the work of Brahmins, the highest of the varṇas. Nārada specifies that only in the Kali Yuga will a Śūdra be able to practice very intense austerities (tapas). Before that time, practicing of tapas is a crime for a Śūdra. Indeed, Nārada identifies the cause of the Brahmin boy's death as being a Śūdra engaged in tapas on the outskirts of Rāma's kingdom. He tells Rāma to survey his kingdom and rid it of all wrongdoing, including this errant Śūdra. Rāma obliges and, after traveling throughout his kingdom, finds an ascetic hanging upside down from a tree on a mountainside in the southern reaches of the Ayodhyā kingdom