Mahabharata · The Ramopakhyana: Markandeya’s Story of Rama

About 95 minutes · in 3 sittings

Back in the forest after tearing Draupadi out of Jayadratha’s hands, Yudhishthira asks Markandeya one question: has any man on this earth been more unfortunate than I am? And the sage answers him with the story of a prince whose wife was also stolen from a forest, who bridged the sea with an army of monkeys, and who took the thief’s head on the thief’s own island. This is Vyasa’s Rama, told in the Mahabharata’s own compact way and not Valmiki’s: it begins with a quarrel between Kubera and Vishrava before Ravana is born, it has the gods come down as monkeys and bears, it keeps Sita alive in Lanka through Trijata and Avindhya, and it ends the war the way Markandeya ends it and no other way. Read it remembering who is speaking: a sage who wants a broken king to understand that sorrow comes to kings too, and that they climb out of it.

Markandeya answers: Rama suffered too; the birth of Ravana, a thousand years of penance, and what Brahma gave away

Yudhishthira had asked whether any man alive had ever been as unlucky as he was, and Markandeya, who had lived through more ages than the king had lived years, gave him a name instead of consolation. Even Rama, he said, suffered misery beyond compare. The wicked Ravana, king of the Rakshasas, used deceit, beat down the vulture Jatayu, and carried Rama’s wife Sita off by force from her hermitage in the woods. And Rama got her back, with Sugriva’s help, by building a bridge across the sea and burning Lanka with his keen-edged arrows. That was the whole story in four lines, and it was exactly the kind of summary that makes a listener want the rest. Yudhishthira wanted the rest. In what race was Rama born, he asked, and what was the measure of his strength and prowess? Whose son was Ravana, and what was the quarrel between him and Rama? Tell me all of it in detail, illustrious one; I long to hear the story of Rama of the great deeds. Markandeya settled into it. Listen, prince of Bharata’s race, he said, to this old history exactly as it happened. I will tell you everything about the distress Rama suffered together with his wife. There was a great king named Aja, of the line of Ikshvaku. His son was Dasharatha, devoted to the study of the Vedas and always pure, and Dasharatha had four sons who understood duty and profit: Rama, Lakshmana, Shatrughna, and the mighty Bharata. Rama’s mother was Kausalya; Bharata’s was Kaikeyi; Lakshmana and Shatrughna, those scourges of their enemies, were the sons of Sumitra. Janaka was king of Videha, and Sita was his daughter, and Tvashtri himself had made her, wanting her to be Rama’s beloved wife. That, said the sage, is the history of the births of Rama and Sita. Now, king, hear the birth of Ravana.

It began, as the worst quarrels do, inside a family. The Lord of all creatures and Creator of the universe, the self-born Prajapati of great ascetic merit, is Ravana’s grandfather. Pulastya has a mighty son called Vaishravana, begotten of a cow, and that son left his father and went to live with his grandfather instead. The father took it as an insult. In his anger he created a second self, and with half of his own being he was born as Vishrava, for the express purpose of taking revenge on Vaishravana. The Grandsire, meanwhile, was pleased with Vaishravana and heaped him with gifts: immortality, lordship over all the wealth in the universe, the guardianship of one of the quarters of the sky, the friendship of Ishana, and a son named Nalakuvera. For a capital Brahma gave him Lanka, guarded by hosts of Rakshasas, and a chariot called Pushpaka that would go anywhere its rider wished. The kingship of the Yakshas was his, and sovereignty over sovereigns. So there was a son with everything and a father, born of half a soul, who looked on him with rage, and Kubera, king of the Rakshasas, knowing that his father was angry with him, kept trying to make peace. He was king of kings in Lanka and traveled on the shoulders of men, and he sent three Rakshasa women to wait on his father: Pushpotkata, Raka, and Malini. They were skilled in singing and dancing and attentive to the high-souled rishi, and those slender-waisted women competed with one another to please him. The adorable sage was pleased, and he granted each of them a boon, princely sons according to her wish. To Pushpotkata were born two sons, the foremost of Rakshasas, Kumbhakarna and the ten-headed Ravana, both unmatched on earth in prowess. Malini had a son named Vibhishana, and Raka bore twins, Khara and Shurpanakha. Vibhishana surpassed them all in beauty, and he was very pious and diligent in every religious rite. But the ten-headed one was the eldest of them all, religious, energetic, possessed of great strength and prowess. Kumbhakarna was the most powerful in battle, fierce and terrible and a thorough master of illusion. Khara was an expert archer, hostile to Brahmins, living on flesh. And the fierce Shurpanakha was a constant trouble to ascetics.

All of them, learned in the Vedas and diligent in ceremony, lived with their father on Gandhamadana. And there, one day, they saw Vaishravana seated beside their father, rich beyond measure, borne on the shoulders of men, and jealousy took hold of them. They resolved on penance. With austerities of the severest kind they set out to gratify Brahma. The ten-headed Ravana lived on air alone, surrounded by the five sacred fires, absorbed in meditation, standing on one leg for a thousand years. Kumbhakarna hung head downward, on a restricted diet, constant in his austerities. Wise and magnanimous Vibhishana kept fasts, ate only dry leaves, and practiced severe austerity in meditation for a long time. Khara and Shurpanakha, cheerfully, guarded and served the three while they did it. At the end of the thousand years the invincible ten-headed one began cutting off his own heads and offering them into the sacred fire, and at that the Lord of the universe was pleased. Brahma appeared before them in person, told them to stop, and promised each of them a boon. I am pleased with you, my sons, he said. Cease these austerities and ask. Whatever you desire, with the single exception of immortality, shall be granted. And to Ravana: since you offered your heads to the fire out of great ambition, they will adorn your body again as before, as you wish. Your body will not be disfigured, you will be able to take any form you like, and you will conquer your enemies in battle. There is no doubt of it. Ravana asked for what an ambitious being asks for. May I never be defeated, he said, by Gandharvas, celestials, Kinnaras, Asuras, Yakshas, Rakshasas, serpents, or any other creatures. Brahma answered him precisely. From those you have named you shall have no fear, he said, except from men. Good betide you; so I have ordained. And Ravana, gratified, went away happy, because in his perverted understanding the man-eater held human beings in contempt. Then the Grandsire spoke to Kumbhakarna in the same way, and Kumbhakarna, his reason clouded by darkness, asked for long-lasting sleep, and Brahma said, so be it. Then he turned to Vibhishana. My son, I am much pleased with you; ask any boon you please. Vibhishana said: even in great danger, may I never swerve from the path of righteousness, and though ignorant, adorable sire, may I be illumined with the light of divine knowledge. Brahma said: scourge of your enemies, since your soul does not incline to unrighteousness although you were born in the Rakshasa race, I grant you immortality.

With his boon in hand Ravana did what the boon had been for. He defeated Kubera in battle and took Lanka from him. That adorable being left the city, followed by Gandharvas, Yakshas, Rakshasas, and Kinnaras, and went to live on Mount Gandhamadana, and Ravana took the celestial chariot Pushpaka from him by force. Kubera cursed him for it. This chariot shall never carry you, he said; it shall carry the man who kills you in battle. And since you have insulted me, your elder brother, you shall soon die. The pious Vibhishana, walking the path of the virtuous, followed Kubera, and the Lord of wealth, well pleased with his younger brother, made him commander of the Yaksha and Rakshasa hosts. The mighty man-eating Rakshasas and Pishachas, for their part, gathered together and made the ten-headed one their sovereign. Able to take any form at will, terrible in prowess, able to travel through the air, Ravana attacked the gods and the Daityas and stripped them of everything they valued. Because he made all creatures cry out in terror he was called Ravana, and he put fear into the gods themselves. So the Brahmarshis, the Siddhas, and the Devarshis went to Brahma for protection, with Havyavaha, the fire god, as their spokesman. That powerful son of Vishrava cannot be slain because of your boon, Agni said. Endowed with great might he oppresses the creatures of the earth in every possible way. Protect us, adorable one; there is no one else. Brahma’s answer was that the thing was already in motion. Agni, he said, he cannot be conquered in battle by gods or Asuras. I have already ordained what is needed for the purpose. Indeed his death is near. At my urging the four-armed god has already taken birth for this object; Vishnu, that foremost of smiters, will accomplish it. And in their presence the Grandsire told Shakra: be born on earth, you and all the celestials, and beget on monkeys and bears heroic sons of great strength who can take any form at will, as allies of Vishnu. The gods, the Gandharvas, and the Danavas assembled at once to take counsel on how each should be born on earth according to his part. Before them the boon-giving god commanded a Gandharvi named Dundubhi: go there, and accomplish this object. Dundubhi heard the Grandsire and was born in the world of men as the hunchback Manthara. And all the principal celestials, Shakra and the rest, begot offspring on the wives of the foremost monkeys and bears, sons equal to their fathers in strength and fame, able to split mountain peaks, with stones and Sala and Tala trees for weapons, bodies hard as adamant, skilled in war, able to muster any measure of energy at will, equal to a thousand elephants in might, swift as the wind. Some lived where they pleased and some in the forests. And the Creator of the universe, having ordained all this, instructed Manthara in what she would have to do. Manthara understood him as fast as thought, and went here and there, forever stirring up quarrels.

A key to reading this (Vyasa’s Rama, not Valmiki’s): This is the Ramopakhyana, the Rama story as Markandeya tells it inside the Mahabharata, and it differs from the Valmiki Ramayana and from every later retelling in details large and small. Here Kubera (Vaishravana) is Pulastya’s son “begotten of a cow,” and Vishrava is Pulastya’s own half-self created for revenge; Ravana, Kumbhakarna, Vibhishana, Khara, and Shurpanakha are the sons of three Rakshasa women Kubera sent to serve his father; and Manthara is a Gandharvi named Dundubhi, sent by Brahma, rather than a palace maid. The monkeys and bears are the gods’ children, but no individual god is matched here to any individual monkey. Tvashtri, who made Sita, is the divine craftsman. For the full Valmiki telling, see the site’s Ramayana.

The gist: Asked whether anyone was ever unluckier than he is, Yudhishthira is given Rama, and Markandeya starts the story at its roots: Dasharatha’s four sons, a Sita made by Tvashtri, and a Rakshasa family born of jealousy inside Pulastya’s own house. A thousand years of penance win Brahma’s boons; Ravana leaves men off his list of enemies, Kumbhakarna asks for sleep, Vibhishana asks for righteousness and gets immortality. Kubera loses Lanka and Pushpaka and curses his brother, the gods are told to father monkeys and bears, and a Gandharvi is sent down to be a hunchback whose job is to make trouble.

The night of Pushya, Kaikeyi’s two boons, Bharata at Chitrakuta, and Shurpanakha’s ruined face at Ravana’s feet

Yudhishthira had the births now; he wanted the wound. Adorable one, he said, you have described in detail how Rama and the others were born. I wish to learn the cause of their exile. Tell me, Brahmin, why the sons of Dasharatha, the brothers Rama and Lakshmana, went to the forest with the famous princess of Mithila. Markandeya took him back to a happy court. The pious king Dasharatha, ever mindful of the old and diligent in ceremony, was greatly pleased when those sons were born. They grew in strength, mastered the Vedas with all their mysteries and the science of arms, and when they had completed their Brahmacharya vows and were married, the king was happy and highly pleased. Rama, the eldest and the wisest, became his father’s favorite and delighted the people with his charming ways. And then the wise king, judging himself old, took counsel with his virtuous ministers and his spiritual adviser about installing Rama as regent of the kingdom, and all those great ministers agreed that the time had come. Markandeya paused over the son the father was looking at, and the portrait is worth having: red eyes, sinewy arms, the gait of a wild elephant, long arms and high shoulders and black curling hair; valiant, glowing with splendor, Indra’s equal in battle and Brihaspati’s in wisdom; loved by everyone, skilled in every science, his senses so completely in hand that even his enemies were glad to look at him; a terror to the wicked and a protector of the good, intelligent, impossible to baffle, victorious over all and never defeated by anyone. Seeing that son, the enhancer of Kausalya’s joy, Dasharatha was very happy, and he said cheerfully to the family priest: blessed be you, Brahmin; this night of the Pushya constellation brings a very auspicious conjunction. Have the materials collected and have Rama invited. Pushya lasts until tomorrow, and tomorrow my ministers and I will invest Rama as prince regent over all my subjects.

The palace had thin walls, and the Gandharvi who had been born to be a hunchback was listening. Manthara, Kaikeyi’s maid, heard the king’s words and went to her mistress and said what the occasion called for. Your great ill luck, Kaikeyi, has been proclaimed today by the king. Unlucky woman, may a fierce and angry snake of virulent poison bite you! Kausalya is the fortunate one; it is her son who is going to be installed on the throne. Where is your prosperity, when your own son does not get the kingdom? Kaikeyi, slender-waisted and beautiful, put on all her ornaments and went looking for her husband in a private place. She came to him joyful and smiling, with every blandishment of love. King, she said, you are always true to your promises. You promised me once to grant an object of my desire. Fulfill that promise now and save yourself from the sin of an unredeemed pledge. Dasharatha, who did not know what he was agreeing to, agreed in the largest possible terms. I will grant you a boon; ask whatever you wish. What man who does not deserve death shall be slain today, and who that deserves death shall be set free? On whom shall I bestow wealth today, or whose wealth shall I confiscate? All the wealth in this world, except what belongs to Brahmins, is mine. I am the king of kings and the protector of all four orders. Tell me quickly, blessed lady, what your heart is set on. She had him bound to his word now and she knew her power over him, and she said it plainly. I desire that Bharata receive the investiture you have designed for Rama, and that Rama go into exile for fourteen years in the forest of Dandaka as an ascetic, with matted locks on his head, clothed in rags and deerskin. The king heard those cruel words and was struck utterly speechless. But Rama, mighty and virtuous, learning what had been asked of his father, went to the forest so that the king’s truth might stay unbroken, and he was followed, blessed be you, by the auspicious Lakshmana, foremost of bowmen, and by his wife Sita, princess of Videha, Janaka’s daughter. And after Rama had gone, king Dasharatha gave up his body, according to the eternal law of time.

Kaikeyi, knowing that Rama was far away and the king was dead, had Bharata brought before her. Dasharatha has gone to heaven, she told him, and Rama and Lakshmana are in the forest. Take this kingdom, which is vast, and whose peace no rival can disturb. Her son’s answer was the first thing that went wrong with her plan. You have done a wicked deed, the virtuous Bharata said. You have killed your husband and destroyed this family out of lust for wealth alone. You have heaped infamy on my head, accursed woman of our race, and so, mother, you have achieved your object. He wept aloud as he said it. Then, having proved his innocence before all the subjects of the realm, he set out after Rama to bring him back. He put Kausalya and Sumitra and Kaikeyi in vehicles at the head of his train and went with a heavy heart, Shatrughna beside him, Vasishtha and Vamadeva and Brahmins by the thousand with him, and the people of the cities and the provinces, all wanting Rama home. He found Rama with Lakshmana on the mountains of Chitrakuta, bow in hand, wearing the ornaments of an ascetic. And Rama sent him back, because he was determined to act on his father’s word. Bharata returned and ruled at Nandigrama with his brother’s wooden sandals set before him. Rama, fearing another intrusion by the people of Ayodhya, went deeper into the great forest, toward the hermitage of Sharabhanga; he paid his respects to Sharabhanga, entered the Dandaka forest, and made his home on the banks of the beautiful Godavari. Living there, he was drawn into hostilities with Khara, who lived in Janasthana, on account of Shurpanakha, and for the protection of the ascetics the righteous scion of Raghu killed fourteen thousand Rakshasas, and having killed those mighty Rakshasas Khara and Dushana, made that sacred forest safe again.

After those Rakshasas were dead, Shurpanakha, her nose and lips mutilated, went to Lanka, her brother’s city. She came before Ravana senseless with grief, dried blood on her face, and fell at his feet. Ravana looked at what had been done to her and lost his senses to rage; he ground his teeth and sprang from his seat. He dismissed his ministers and questioned her in private, and the questions came out of him as images, each one of a man who has just done something fatal without knowing it. Blessed sister, who has made you like this, forgetting me, disregarding me? Who is it that has found a sharp-pointed spear and rubbed his own body with it? Who is sleeping in happiness and security after setting a fire beside his head? Who has trodden on a vengeful snake of virulent poison? Who is standing with his hand thrust into the mouth of a maned lion? Flames of wrath burst from his body like the flames that come at night from the hollows of a burning tree. His sister told him of Rama’s prowess and of the defeat of the Rakshasas with Khara and Dushana at their head. Informed of the slaughter of his kin, Ravana, driven by Fate, remembered Maricha, and thought of him as the means for killing Rama. He settled on his course, arranged for the government of his capital, consoled his sister, and set out on an aerial voyage. He crossed the Trikuta and the Kala mountains and saw the vast receptacle of deep waters, the home of the makaras, and crossing the ocean the ten-headed one came to Gokarna, the favorite resort of the god who carries the trident. There Ravana met his old friend Maricha, who out of fear of Rama himself had taken up the life of an ascetic.

A key to reading this (what is missing on purpose): Vyasa’s telling moves at a gallop. Kaikeyi’s two boons come in a single sentence, Dasharatha’s grief and death in one line, and there is no journey to Chitrakuta, no Guha, no Bharadvaja, and no scene of Shurpanakha approaching Rama and Lakshmana or of Lakshmana cutting her nose and ears; the source says only “on account of Shurpanakha” and then shows her ruined face. Everything that is here belongs to this source: the Pushya night, the fourteen years, the sandals at Nandigrama, Sharabhanga, the Godavari, the fourteen thousand Rakshasas of Janasthana, and Maricha living as an ascetic at Gokarna out of fear of Rama. The full Valmiki version is in the site’s Ramayana.

The gist: Dasharatha fixes Rama’s investiture for the night of Pushya; Manthara goads Kaikeyi, and Kaikeyi pulls on an old promise to get the throne for Bharata and fourteen years of forest for Rama. Rama goes to keep his father’s word, the king dies, and Bharata curses his mother, follows Rama to Chitrakuta, and comes home with a pair of sandals. In Dandaka, Khara, Dushana, and fourteen thousand Rakshasas die, and a sister with no nose falls at Ravana’s feet, from which he rises and flies to Gokarna to find Maricha.

The deer with golden horns: Maricha’s last duty, and the carrying off of Sita

Markandeya went on, and Yudhishthira, who had asked whether any man had ever been more unfortunate than himself, was about to hear the answer arrive in the shape of a deer. Ravana came to Maricha’s hermitage, and Maricha, who had once been a Rakshasa of the first rank and was now an ascetic living on fruit and roots, received him with every courtesy and set food before him. He let the king sit and rest. Then, being a man skilled in speech, he sat down beside a guest who was also skilled in speech and asked the questions a host asks a king whose face has changed color. Is all well with the kingdom, lord of the Rakshasas? Do the subjects still obey as they used to? What business brings you here? Whatever it is, consider it already done, however hard it may be. Ravana, his heart churning with rage and humiliation, told him in few words what Rama had done and what he intended to do about it. Maricha answered in words as few, and they were the most honest words anyone would say to Ravana in this whole story. Do not provoke Rama. I know his strength. Is there anyone alive who can stand against the force of his arrows? That great man is the reason I live as an ascetic now. What evil-minded creature has put you on this road, which leads only to your ruin? Ravana had not come for counsel. If you do not obey my orders, he said, you will certainly die at my hands. And Maricha, weighing one death against another, reasoned it out inside himself: since death is certain either way, I will do his bidding, for it is better to die at the hands of the greater one. He told the king he would help him in whatever way he could. Then the Ten-headed laid out the plan. Go and tempt Sita in the shape of a deer with golden horns and a golden skin. When Sita sees you she will send Rama off to hunt you. Then Sita will be in my power and I will carry her off by force, and that wicked Rama will die of grief at losing his wife. Help me in this way.

What Maricha did next tells you everything about what he expected. He performed his own funeral rites in advance, and then, with a sorrowing heart, he followed Ravana, who walked ahead. They reached the hermitage of Rama, the doer of hard deeds, and did exactly as arranged. Ravana took the shape of an ascetic with a shaven head, a water pot, and the triple staff of a renunciant. Maricha became the deer. In that shape he showed himself to the princess of Videha, and she, moved by Fate, sent Rama after it. Rama, wanting to please her, snatched up his bow at once, left Lakshmana behind to guard her, and went in pursuit, armed with bow and quiver and sword, his fingers sheathed in gloves of iguana skin, chasing that deer the way Rudra once chased the deer of the stars across the sky. The Rakshasa drew him a long way off, showing himself and then vanishing, showing himself again a little further on. When at last Rama understood what the deer was, that it was a Rakshasa, the glorious scion of Raghu drew an arrow that could not miss and killed the disguised creature where it stood. And the Rakshasa, struck by Rama’s arrow, did the one thing Ravana had really brought him for. In Rama’s own voice he cried out, as if in mortal distress, calling on Sita and on Lakshmana.

The cry reached the hermitage, and the princess of Videha told Lakshmana to run toward the quarter it had come from. Lakshmana tried reason first. Timid lady, you have no cause to be afraid, he said. Who is strong enough to strike Rama down? In a moment, lady of the sweet smile, you will see your husband Rama again. And the chaste Sita, out of that timidity that the poem calls natural to women, grew suspicious even of the blameless Lakshmana and began to weep aloud, and then, devoted to her husband and terrified for him, she said to his brother the cruelest thing she would ever say. The thing you are nursing in your heart, fool, will never come to pass. I would kill myself with a weapon, or throw myself from the top of a hill, or walk into a blazing fire, sooner than live with a wretch like you and forsake my husband Rama, like a tigress taking shelter with a jackal. Lakshmana, good-natured and devoted to his brother, put his hands over his ears. He went out on the track Rama had taken without a single glance at the lady whose lips were soft and red as the bimba fruit. And the hermitage was empty of its guards.

Then the Rakshasa Ravana, respectable on the outside and wicked underneath, like a fire buried in a heap of ashes, showed himself in the guise of a hermit, come to take that blameless woman by force. Janaka’s virtuous daughter, seeing a holy man approach, welcomed him with fruit and roots and a seat. He ignored all of it, dropped the disguise, and stood before her in his own form, and then he tried, in his way, to reassure her. I am the king of the Rakshasas, Sita, known by the name of Ravana. My delightful city, Lanka, lies across the great ocean. There, among beautiful women, you will shine beside me. Leave the ascetic Rama, lady of the lovely lips, and become my wife. Janaka’s daughter shut her ears against those words and the others that followed in the same vein, and gave him her answer. Do not say such things. The vault of heaven with all its stars may fall, the earth may break into pieces, fire may change its nature and turn cold, and still I could not forsake the descendant of Raghu. How could a she-elephant who has lived with the mighty leader of the herd, his temples split with rut, leave him for a hog? A woman who has once tasted the sweet wine of honey and flowers, what pleasure could she take in the wretched liquor made from rice? She turned and went into the cottage, her lips trembling with anger, her arms moving in agitation. Ravana followed her in and blocked her way. He shouted at her, and under that roughness she fainted. Then Ravana seized her by the hair of her head and rose into the sky. And on a mountain peak a huge vulture named Jatayu saw a helpless woman being carried through the air, weeping, calling in her distress on Rama.

A key to reading this (Vyasa’s Rama, not Valmiki’s): This is the Ramopakhyana, the Rama story as Markandeya tells it inside the Mahabharata, and it is leaner and in places different from the Ramayana of Valmiki. There is no line drawn around the hut here, no begging bowl; Ravana comes as a shaven ascetic with a water pot and triple staff and takes Sita by the hair, and Maricha performs his own funeral rites before he goes. Sita’s harsh words to Lakshmana are in both tellings. The deer of the stars that Rudra chased is Prajapati, who fled from Rudra in the form of a deer and became a constellation. Valmiki’s full version of these events is on this site’s Ramayana pages.

The gist: Maricha warns Ravana off, then, knowing he is dead either way, agrees to be the golden deer and leads Rama far from the hermitage. His dying cry in Rama’s voice sends Sita to drive Lakshmana away with words she cannot take back. Ravana drops his hermit’s disguise, hears Sita’s refusal, seizes her by the hair, and lifts her into the sky. On a mountain peak, a vulture named Jatayu has seen it.

Jatayu’s broken wings, the arms of the headless demon, and the friendship made on Rishyamuka

The vulture on the mountain was no ordinary bird. Jatayu was king of the vultures, brother of Sampati by the same mother, son of Aruna, and a friend of Dasharatha, which made the woman on Ravana’s lap his daughter-in-law. He rushed at the king of the Rakshasas in a fury and spoke to him in the air. Let go of the princess of Mithila, let her go, I say. How can you carry her off, Rakshasa, while I am alive? If you do not release my daughter-in-law you will not escape me with your life. Then he went at Ravana with his talons and tore him, and with wings and beak he mangled him in a hundred places, and the blood ran off Ravana’s body the way water runs off a mountain spring. Ravana, attacked by a bird that wanted only Rama’s good, drew a sword and cut off both its wings. He killed the king of the vultures, huge as a mountain peak thrusting up above the clouds, and rose high into the sky with Sita on his lap. And Sita, who could not fight, did what an intelligent woman does when she cannot fight. Wherever she saw a hermitage of ascetics below her, a lake, a river, a tank, she let fall one of her ornaments. And seeing five foremost monkeys on a mountaintop, she dropped among them a broad piece of her costly dress, and the beautiful yellow cloth fell fluttering through the air into their midst like lightning out of a cloud. The Rakshasa crossed a great stretch of sky as a bird crosses air. Soon he saw his own charming city with its many gates, walled high on every side, built by Vishvakarma himself, and the king of the Rakshasas entered Lanka with Sita.

While Sita was being carried away, Rama, having killed the great deer, was walking back, and on the way he saw his brother. The sight of Lakshmana told him everything before a word was spoken. How could you come here, he said, and leave the princess of Videha in a forest haunted by Rakshasas? He thought of how the Rakshasa in the shape of a deer had drawn him so far off, and of his brother’s arrival, which meant Sita alone in the hermitage, and agony took him. He kept walking toward Lakshmana, fast, reproving him as he came, and then asked the only question that mattered. Lakshmana, is the princess of Videha still alive? I am afraid she is no more. Lakshmana told him everything Sita had said, and especially the unbecoming words she had said last. Rama ran for the hermitage with his heart on fire. On the way he saw a vulture huge as a mountain lying in the agonies of death. Taking it for a Rakshasa, the descendant of Kakutstha and his brother rushed at it, bows bent into circles. The great bird spoke to them both. Blessings on you, I am the king of the vultures, and the friend of Dasharatha. The two brothers lowered their bows. Who is this, they said, that speaks our father’s name in these woods? Then they saw that the creature was a bird with both wings gone, and the bird told them how Ravana had struck him down for Sita’s sake. Rama asked which way Ravana had gone. The vulture answered with a movement of his head, and died. Rama read from that sign that Ravana had gone south, and honoring his father’s friend, he had the funeral rites performed with full ceremony.

Then the two brothers, chastisers of foes, took the southern road through the Dandaka woods, grieving for the princess of Videha, and the forest showed them what a Rakshasa country looks like. Deserted hermitages, one after another, their kusha-grass seats and leaf umbrellas and broken water pots scattered about and hundreds of jackals nosing through them. Herds of deer running in every direction. A din of creatures like the noise that goes ahead of a forest fire. And then the thing itself: a headless Rakshasa of terrible aspect, dark as a rain cloud and big as a hill, with shoulders broad as a shala tree and gigantic arms, a pair of large eyes set in its chest, and the opening of its mouth in its enormous belly. It took Lakshmana by the hand without any difficulty at all. Seized like that, the son of Sumitra was bewildered and helpless, and the headless creature, keeping its chest-eyes on Rama, began drawing Lakshmana toward the part of its body where the mouth was. Lakshmana, in his grief, made a speech that was really an accounting of their lives. Look at my plight. The loss of your kingdom, then our father’s death, then Sita’s abduction, and now this disaster that has fallen on me. I will not see you go back to Kosala with the princess of Videha and sit on your ancestral throne as ruler of the whole earth. Only the fortunate will see your face, like the moon coming out of the clouds, after the bath of your coronation in water sanctified with kusha grass and parched rice and black beans. Rama, who did not lose his nerve in danger, cut him short. Tiger among men, do not give way to grief. What is this thing while I am here? Cut off his right arm and I will cut off his left. He was still speaking when his sharp sword took the monster’s left arm off as if it were a stalk of sesame. The mighty son of Sumitra, seeing his brother standing there, struck off the right arm with his own sword, and then went on striking the creature under the ribs until the huge headless body dropped to the ground and died. Out of that body came a person of celestial appearance, who hung a moment in the sky like the sun in its brilliance, and Rama, skilled in speech, asked him: who are you? Answer me. How could such a thing happen? All this seems to me exceedingly wonderful. I am a Gandharva named Vishvavasu, prince, the being said. Through a Brahmin’s curse I had to take the form and nature of a Rakshasa. As for you, Rama: Sita has been carried off by force by king Ravana, who lives in Lanka. Go to Sugriva, who will give you his friendship. Near the peak of Rishyamuka is the lake called Pampa, of sacred water and cranes, and there, with four counselors, lives Sugriva, brother of the monkey king Vali who wears the golden garland. Go to him and tell him the cause of your sorrow. His plight is very like your own, and he will help you. I can say no more than this. You will see Janaka’s daughter, have no doubt. Ravana and his kind are certainly known to the king of the monkeys. The radiant being vanished, and the two heroes stood wondering.

Grief walked with Rama to the edge of Pampa, a lake full of lotuses of every kind, and the cool sweet-scented breeze off the water did what such breezes do to the bereaved: it brought his wife back to him all at once, and he broke down. Lakshmana, who had already been called a fool that day by a woman he revered, now had to be the steady one, and he was. You who give proper respect to those who deserve it, he said, this despondency should not be allowed near you, as illness never touches an old man who lives a regular life. You have news of Ravana and of the princess of Videha. Now free her, with exertion and intelligence. Let us go to Sugriva, foremost of monkeys, who is on the mountaintop even now. Take heart, while I, your disciple and slave and ally, am beside you. Rama came back to himself and turned to the work in front of him. The brothers bathed in the Pampa and poured its water in offering to their ancestors, and set out for Rishyamuka, a mountain rich in fruit and roots and trees, and there on the peak they saw five monkeys. Sugriva, watching them come, sent his intelligent counselor Hanuman, huge as the Himalaya, down to receive them. The brothers spoke first with Hanuman and then went up to Sugriva, and Rama made a friend of him. When Rama told him what he had come for, Sugriva showed him the piece of cloth that Sita had dropped among the monkeys as she was carried past, and with that credential in his hands Rama did two things at once. He himself installed Sugriva as sovereign of all the monkeys of the earth, and he pledged himself to kill Vali in battle. With that understanding between them and full confidence on both sides, they all went to Kishkindha, wanting the fight.

At Kishkindha, Sugriva let out a roar as deep as a waterfall, and Vali could not bear the challenge. His wife Tara stood in his way. The way Sugriva is roaring, strong as he is himself, I judge he has found help, she said. You should not go out. Vali, the eloquent king of the monkeys in his golden garland, asked the moon-faced Tara, who understood the speech of every creature, to reflect and tell him whose help this brother of his in name only had found. Tara thought for a moment and told him exactly. Listen, monarch of the monkeys. Rama the son of Dasharatha, foremost of bowmen and mighty, whose wife has been ravished, has made an alliance with Sugriva for attack and for defense, and his brother Lakshmana, the intelligent, mighty-armed, unconquered son of Sumitra, stands beside him for the success of Sugriva’s cause. Mainda and Dvivida, and Hanuman the son of the Wind, and Jambavan the king of the bears, are Sugriva’s counselors. All of them are strong and intelligent, and all of them, relying on Rama’s might and energy, are ready for your destruction. It was good advice, and Vali threw it away. Jealousy told him that Tara had set her heart on Sugriva; he said harsh things to her and went out of his cave to where Sugriva waited by the Malyavat mountains. Beaten by me before, again and again, fond of your life as you are, you were allowed to keep it because you are my kinsman, Vali said. What has made you want death so soon? Sugriva answered his brother as if he were speaking to Rama, so that Rama would hear the case. King, robbed by you of my wife and of my kingdom too, what do I need with life? Know that this is what I have come for. They went at each other with shala trees and tala trees and stones. They threw each other to the ground, leaped into the air and struck with their fists, tore each other with nails and teeth, and both were so covered in blood that they shone like two kinshuka trees in flower, and no difference could be seen between them to tell one from the other. Then Hanuman put a garland of flowers around Sugriva’s neck, and Sugriva stood out in it like the great peak of Malya belted with cloud. Rama, knowing Sugriva by that sign, drew his enormous bow and took Vali for his mark, and the twang of the string was like the roar of an engine. The arrow went through Vali’s heart. He trembled, he began to vomit blood, and he saw Rama standing before him with the son of Sumitra at his side. Reproaching the descendant of Kakutstha, Vali fell to the ground and lost consciousness, and Tara looked down at her lord, who had the radiance of the moon, lying on the bare earth. With Vali dead, Sugriva got back Kishkindha, and with it the widowed, moon-faced Tara. And Rama lived four months on the lovely slopes of Malyavat, honored by Sugriva the whole time.

A key to reading this (what is here and what is missing): Vyasa’s headless demon has no name of his own; the Gandharva who steps out of him gives his name as Vishvavasu, and the Valmiki name Kabandha never appears. There is no Shabari. Vali’s death takes a few lines: no long complaint from the dying king, no argument from Rama about dharma; Vali reproaches him and falls, and the story moves on. Ganguli’s English prints Jatayu’s father as “Arjuna”; the Sanskrit has Aruna, the charioteer of the Sun, and that is the name kept here. “Vishvakrit,” the builder of Lanka, is Vishvakarma, the architect of the gods.

The gist: Jatayu loses his wings to Ravana’s sword; Sita drops ornaments along the way and her yellow cloth among five monkeys. Rama takes the direction south from a dying vulture’s nod, cuts the arms off a headless demon with Lakshmana, and hears from the Gandharva inside it where to find Sugriva. Friendship is made on Rishyamuka with the cloth as proof, and at Kishkindha, by the sign of Hanuman’s garland, Rama’s arrow finds Vali’s heart. Sugriva is king, and Rama waits four months on Malyavat.

Sita in the ashoka grove: the ring of Rakshasis, Trijata’s dream, and Ravana sent away empty-handed

Ravana, burning with desire, brought Sita to Lanka and lodged her inside a grove of ashoka trees, in a dwelling that looked like Nandana, the garden of the gods, and at the same time like a hermitage of ascetics. The large-eyed Sita made it a hermitage in earnest. She lived there in misery on fruit and roots, fasting, practicing austerities, dressed as an ascetic, thinning day by day, thinking of the lord who was far away. Around her the king of the Rakshasas posted women of his own race, armed with barbed darts and swords and lances and battle-axes and maces and flaming brands, and Markandeya took care to describe them, because the description is the prison. Some of them had two eyes and some three; some had eyes in their foreheads; some had long tongues and some had none; some had three breasts and some a single leg; some wore three matted braids on their heads and some had one eye. These and others, with blazing eyes and hair as stiff as a camel’s, stood around Sita day and night, watching. Their voices were dreadful and their faces worse, and they spoke to the large-eyed lady in the harshest tones they had. Let us eat her up, they said among themselves. Let us mangle her, let us tear her into pieces, this woman who sits here disregarding our lord. Sita, sick with grief for her husband, drew a deep breath and answered them. Reverend ladies, eat me up without delay. I have no wish to live without that husband of mine, with eyes like lotus petals and wavy hair and a body dark as the rain cloud. I will take no food and I will hold no love of life, and I will waste my limbs the way a she-snake wastes inside a tala tree. Know this for certain: I will never seek the protection of anyone but the descendant of Raghu. Knowing that, do what you think fit. The Rakshasis with the discordant voices went off to the king to report everything she had said.

When they had gone, one of their number stayed, and she was different. Her name was Trijata, and she was virtuous and pleasant in her speech, and she began to console the princess of Videha. Listen, Sita, she said. I am going to tell you something, and, friend, believe what I say. Cast off your fears, lady of the fair hips, and hear me. There is an intelligent and aged chief among the Rakshasas named Avindhya. He always seeks Rama’s good, and he has sent me these words for you: reassure Sita and cheer her, and tell her in my name that her husband, the mighty Rama, is well and is attended by Lakshmana; that the blessed descendant of Raghu has already made friends with Sugriva, king of the monkeys, and is ready to act for her; and that she need have no fear on account of Ravana, whom the whole world censures, because she is safe from him through the curse of Nalakubara. That wretch was cursed long ago for violating his daughter-in-law Rambha. This lustful wretch cannot force any woman against her will. Your husband will come soon, guarded by Sugriva and with the intelligent son of Sumitra in his train, and will take you away from here. Then Trijata told her dream, and the dream is the strangest and most beautiful passage in this part of the story. I have had a terrible dream of evil omen, lady, foretelling the destruction of this wicked-minded wretch of Pulastya’s line. This night-wanderer of mean deeds is cruel and wicked in the extreme; he frightens everyone by the defects of his nature and the wickedness of his conduct, and with his senses taken from him by Fate he challenges the very gods. In my vision I saw every sign of his fall. I saw the Ten-headed one with his head shaven and his body smeared with oil, sunk in mire, and the next moment dancing on a chariot drawn by mules. I saw Kumbhakarna and the others, naked, their heads shaven, decked with red wreaths and red unguents, running toward the south. Vibhishana alone I saw with an umbrella over his head and a turban on it, his body adorned with white wreaths and white unguents, climbing to the summit of the White Hill, and I saw four of his counselors, in white wreaths and white unguents, climbing that summit with him. All this means that these alone will be saved from the terror that is coming. The whole earth with its oceans and seas will be covered with Rama’s arrows; your husband, lady, will fill the earth with his fame. I saw Lakshmana too, burning up all the directions with his arrows, climbing a heap of bones and drinking honey and rice boiled in milk on top of it. And you, lady, I saw running toward the north, weeping and covered in blood, and a tiger was protecting you. Soon, princess of Videha, you will find happiness, Sita, united with your lord, the descendant of Raghu, and his brother beside him. Hearing Trijata, the girl with the eyes of a young gazelle began once more to hope for a reunion with her lord, and when the fierce and cruel Pishacha guards came back they found her sitting with Trijata as before.

So the chaste Sita lived there, sunk in melancholy and grief for her husband, in mean clothes, with a single jewel left to her on the marriage thread at her wrist, weeping without pause, seated on a stone and attended by Rakshasa women. And to that stone came Ravana, wounded by the arrows of the god of desire. He had prepared himself for the visit. The conqueror in battle of gods and Danavas and Gandharvas and Yakshas and Kimpurushas came into the ashoka grove dressed in celestial robes, handsome in feature, wearing jeweled earrings and a fine garland and a crown, like the spring season itself walking in a body. Dressed with that care he looked like the wishing-tree in Indra’s garden, and every ornament on him only deepened her dread, the way a decorated banyan in the middle of a cremation ground would. The night-wanderer approaching that slender-waisted woman was the planet Saturn approaching Rohini. Struck through by the flower-bannered god’s shafts, he spoke to the fair-hipped lady, who shrank from him like a helpless doe. You have shown regard enough for your lord, Sita. Be merciful to me, lady of the delicate limbs. Let your person be adorned now by these maids in waiting. Accept me as your lord, excellent lady, and in costly robes and ornaments take the first place among all the women of my household. I possess many daughters of the celestials and of the Gandharvas; I am lord of many Danava and Daitya ladies. One hundred and forty million Pishachas, twice as many man-eating Rakshasas of terrible deeds, and three times as many Yakshas do my bidding, and some of these serve my brother, the lord of all treasures. In my drinking hall Gandharvas and Apsaras wait on me as they wait on him. I am the son of the regenerate rishi Vishrava himself, of high ascetic merit, and I am renowned as the fifth Regent of the Universe. Of food and delicacies and drink of the very best kind I have as much as the lord of the celestials himself. Let your troubles from a life in the woods end. Be my queen, lady of the fair hips, as Mandodari is.

The beautiful princess of Videha turned away from him. She regarded him as something less than a straw, and she answered him with her deep, close-set bosom drenched in the tears that had not stopped, this woman who held her husband to be her god. It is my sheer ill luck, king of the Rakshasas, that I must hear such grievous words from you. Blessings on you, Rakshasa, lover of sensual pleasure; withdraw your heart from me. I am another man’s wife, ever devoted to my husband, and I cannot be possessed by you. A helpless human being, I could not be a fit wife for you. And what joy could you have in forcing an unwilling woman? Your father is a wise Brahmin, born of Brahma and equal to the Lord of creation himself. You are the equal of a Regent of the Universe yourself; why then do you not keep to virtue? You shame your brother, the king of the Yakshas, that adorable one who is the friend of Maheshvara himself, the lord of treasures. How is it you feel no shame? She wept as she finished, her bosom shaking, and she covered her neck and face with her clothes, and the long, well-knit braid, black and glossy, that fell from the weeping woman’s head looked like a black snake. The foolish Ravana, rejected in those cruel words, spoke once more, and in his answer you can hear the curse doing its work. Let the god whose emblem is the makara burn me as sorely as he likes, lady, he said. I will on no account, lady of the sweet smile and the fair hips, come near you while you are unwilling. What can I do to you, who still feel regard for Rama, who is only a human being and therefore our food? Having said that to the woman of faultless features, the king of the Rakshasas made himself invisible then and there and went wherever he pleased. And Sita, ringed by the Rakshasa women and treated tenderly by Trijata, went on living there in her grief.

A key to reading this (the curse, and a quiet friend): In Vyasa’s telling it is a curse, and no restraint of Ravana’s own, that keeps Sita safe: Nalakubara, Kubera’s son, cursed Ravana for forcing his wife Rambha, so that Ravana can never again touch a woman against her will, which is why he ends by saying so himself. Avindhya, the aged Rakshasa counselor who secretly wishes Rama well, belongs to this Mahabharata version and will return in the war. The Regents of the Universe are the four guardians of the directions, Indra, Yama, Varuna, and Kubera; Ravana counts himself a fifth. The dream’s colors follow the omen code of the epic: white for the saved, red and the southward road for the doomed, and Lakshmana on a heap of bones drinking honey and milk-rice is a sign of victory.

The gist: Guarded in Lanka’s ashoka grove by monstrous Rakshasis who threaten to eat her, Sita tells them to go ahead; she will take shelter with no one but Rama. Trijata brings Avindhya’s secret message and her own dream: Rama is coming, Ravana is bound by Nalakubara’s curse, and all of Lanka but Vibhishana is running south. Ravana arrives adorned like the spring and lists his riches; Sita turns away and reminds him of his father and his brother; and he vanishes, admitting he cannot take her against her will.

A moonlit night on Malyavat, the raid on Madhuvana, and Hanuman’s report: Sita has been seen

Markandeya went on, and the story slowed, because this is the part where nothing happens for months and a man has to live through it. Rama and Lakshmana were Sugriva’s guests now. They lived on the flank of the Malyavat hill and looked up at a clear blue sky every day, and the sky did not change and neither did their situation. Then one night Rama was on the summit, watching the moon ride a cloudless heaven among the planets and the stars, when a cold wind came up off the slopes carrying the scent of lily and lotus and the other flowers of that family, and the scent did what scents do. It woke him. Sita was in a Rakshasa’s house, and he was standing on a hill admiring the moon. By morning the grief had hardened into something with an edge, and he turned it on the one person available. Go, Lakshmana, he said. Go to Kishkindha and find that ungrateful king of the monkeys who understands his own interest so well, who is wallowing in his pleasures at this very moment, that fool of his race whom I put on a throne, to whom every ape and monkey and bear owes allegiance, and for whose sake, mighty-armed son of Raghu, I killed Vali in the Kishkindha forest with your help. I consider him the most ungrateful monkey on earth, because that wretch has forgotten me, sunk as I am in this distress. I think he does not intend to keep his word; he is too dull to remember what was done for him. If you find him lukewarm, rolling in his sensual joys, then send him down the road Vali was sent down, to the place where all creatures go in the end. But if you see that best of monkeys hard at work on our cause, then bring him here with you, descendant of Kakutstha. Be quick, and do not delay. Lakshmana, who never argued with an elder’s order, took up his fine bow with its string and arrows and went. He reached the gates of Kishkindha and walked in unchallenged, and the monkey king, who could read a face, came out to meet him knowing he was angry. Sugriva received him with his wife beside him, humbly, with every honor, and Sumitra’s fearless son told him, without softening it, what Rama had said.

The king of the monkeys heard it all, and instead of taking offense he joined his hands. I am neither wicked, Lakshmana, he said, nor ungrateful, nor without virtue. Hear what I have already done to find where Sita is held. I have sent diligent monkeys out in every direction. Every one of them has agreed to be back within a month. They will search the whole earth, hero, her forests and hills and seas, her villages and towns and cities and mines. Only five nights remain of that month. Then you and Rama will hear news that will make you glad. It was an answer with a date in it, and Lakshmana, appeased, honored Sugriva in his turn and brought him back to Rama on the Malyavat hill, where he reported that the work had already begun. And soon the monkey chiefs started coming in by the thousands, having carefully searched three quarters of the earth, the north, the east and the west. The ones who had gone south did not appear. The ones who had come back told Rama that they had searched the whole earth to the belt of the seas and had found neither the princess of Videha nor Ravana. Rama, sick at heart, went on living anyway, and what he lived on was the party that had gone south and had not yet come back.

Two months passed. Then several monkeys came to Sugriva in a hurry with a complaint that turned out to be the best news of the year. King, they said, the son of Pavana, that foremost of monkeys, and Angada, Vali’s son, and the other great monkeys you sent to search the southern region, have returned, and they are plundering the great orchard called Madhuvana, the one Vali always guarded and you have guarded after him. Sugriva heard about this act of liberty and drew the correct inference from it, because only servants who have succeeded behave that way. He told Rama what he suspected, and Rama, from the same evidence, guessed that the princess of Mithila had been seen. Then Hanuman and the others, refreshed on stolen honey, came to their king where he sat with Rama and Lakshmana, and Rama watched Hanuman walk toward him, and watched the color of his face, and was sure. The successful monkeys, with Hanuman at their head, bowed to Rama and Lakshmana and Sugriva as they should. Rama picked up his bow and quiver before he spoke, as if the answer might require them at once. Have you succeeded, he asked. Will you give me my life back? Will you make it possible for me to rule again in Ayodhya, having killed my enemy in battle and rescued Janaka’s daughter? With the princess of Videha not rescued and the foe not slain in battle, I dare not go on living, robbed of my wife and my honor.

I bring you good news, Rama, said the son of Pavana, for I have seen Janaka’s daughter. And he told it. They had searched the southern region for a long time, its hills and forests and mines, until they were worn out. At last they saw a great cavern and went into it, and it ran on for many yojanas, dark and deep, overgrown with trees and crawling with worms, and after a long way they came out into sunlight and found a beautiful palace, the home of the Daitya Maya. There a woman ascetic named Prabhavati was practicing austerities, and she gave them food and drink of many kinds, and when they had their strength back she showed them the way on. They came out of the cavern to the salt sea, and on its shore the Sahya and the Malaya and the great Dardura mountains, and from the top of Malaya they looked out over the whole ocean, and their hearts failed. Hungry, dejected, in pain, they gave up hope of getting home alive. Hundreds of yojanas of water full of whales and alligators lay in front of them, so they sat down together and resolved to die there of starvation, and while they sat, the talk turned to the vulture Jatayu. That was when the bird came, huge as a mountain, frightful, terrifying to every heart, like a second son of Vinata, and it came at them unawares to eat them, and it spoke. Who are you, that talk this way about my brother Jatayu? I am his elder brother, Sampati, king of the birds. Once the two of us flew toward the sun, each trying to outstrip the other. My wings were burned. His were not. That was the last I ever saw of my beloved brother, the king of the vultures; with my wings burned I fell onto the top of this great mountain, and here I still am. When he had finished, the monkeys told him in a few words that his brother was dead and what calamity had come upon Rama, and the mighty Sampati, grieved by the news, asked for all of it: who this Rama was, why Sita had been carried off, how Jatayu had been killed. They told him everything, including why they had sworn to starve. And the king of the birds talked them out of their vow with a piece of information. Ravana, he said, is known to me. Lanka is his capital. I have seen it across the sea, in a valley of the Trikuta hills. Sita must be there. I have very little doubt of it.

They were on their feet at once, Hanuman said, and taking counsel about how to cross the ocean, and when no one else dared, he had recourse to his father and crossed that sea, a hundred yojanas wide. He killed the Rakshasa women on the water. And he saw the chaste Sita inside Ravana’s harem, keeping ascetic vows, longing for a sight of her husband, her hair matted, her body smeared with dirt, thin, melancholy, helpless. He knew her by those unusual signs, and when she was alone he approached her and said: I am a messenger of Rama, Sita, and a monkey begotten by Pavana. I have come through the sky because I wished to see you. The royal brothers Rama and Lakshmana are safe, under the protection of Sugriva, the monarch of all the monkeys. Rama, with Sumitra’s son, asks after your welfare, lady, and Sugriva, for friendship’s sake, asks after it too. Your husband will soon be here with all the monkeys behind him. Trust me, adorable lady. I am a monkey, and no Rakshasa. Sita seemed to think for a moment. Then she said: from what Avindhya has told me, I know that you are Hanuman. Avindhya is an old and respected Rakshasa, mighty-armed one, and he told me that Sugriva is surrounded by counselors like you. You may go now. And with those words she gave him a jewel as her credential, and Hanuman held it out: this jewel, he said, is what the faultless Sita has been living on. She had given him a second token too, a memory only Rama could verify, that once on the breast of the great hill Chitrakuta, tiger among men, you shot a blade of grass at a crow, a blade of grass charged with mantras into a deadly weapon. She said it as proof that he had truly met her and that she was truly the princess of Videha. After that, Hanuman said, I let Ravana’s soldiers seize me. And then I set fire to the city of Lanka.

A key to reading this (Vyasa’s Hanuman): This is Markandeya’s telling, and the whole of Hanuman’s journey to Lanka arrives in a few sentences from Hanuman’s own mouth: the cavern of the Daitya Maya and the ascetic Prabhavati, Sampati on the mountain, the hundred-yojana crossing, Sita’s jewel, the crow on Chitrakuta as a private password, and an old Rakshasa named Avindhya from whom Sita already knows Hanuman’s name. Valmiki’s long Sundara Kanda, with the Ashoka grove, the killing of Aksha, the binding by Brahma’s weapon and the burning tail, is absent here; it can be read in the site’s Valmiki Ramayana.

The gist: A scented wind on a moonlit night reminds Rama of Sita, and by morning he has sent Lakshmana to Sugriva with orders to kill him if he has forgotten his promise. Sugriva asks for five nights. Three quarters of the earth come back empty; the southern party comes back two months late, looting Madhuvana, and Rama reads the news in Hanuman’s walk. Then Hanuman’s report: Sampati’s testimony, the leap across the sea, Sita in Ravana’s harem, her jewel, and Lanka in flames.

The muster of the crores, Rama’s demand of the Ocean, Nala’s bridge, and the coming of Vibhishana

The news changed the hill. On the same slope where Rama sat with the foremost of the monkeys, the great chiefs began to arrive at Sugriva’s summons, and Markandeya counted them for Yudhishthira the way the poet counts them, in numbers that are meant to be felt rather than added. Sushena, the illustrious father-in-law of Vali, came to Rama with a thousand crores of active apes. Gaya and Gavaksha, two foremost monkeys of mighty energy, showed themselves with a hundred crores each. Another Gavaksha, terrible to look at and carrying a bull’s tail, arrived with sixty thousand crores collected behind him. The renowned Gandhamadana, who lived on the mountain of the same name, gathered a hundred thousand crores. The intelligent and mighty Panasa mustered fifty-two crores. Dadhimukha, foremost and illustrious, brought a great army of monkeys of terrible prowess. And Jambavan came with a hundred thousand crores of black bears of dreadful deeds, their faces marked with the tilaka. These and countless other chiefs of chiefs came to help Rama’s cause, king, and their bodies were like mountain peaks and their voices like lions’, and the noise of them running restlessly from place to place was enormous. Some looked like peaks, some like buffaloes, some had the color of autumn clouds and some faces red as vermilion; some leaped up, some came down, some capered and some scattered dust, as they poured in from every direction. And that host, vast as the sea at full tide, camped there at Sugriva’s word.

When the last of them had gathered, Raghu’s illustrious descendant set out with Sugriva beside him, on a very fair day, at an auspicious moment under a lucky constellation, with the army drawn up in order of battle as if it meant to destroy all the worlds. Hanuman, son of the Wind, held the van; the rear was guarded by Sumitra’s fearless son. Ringed by the monkey chiefs, their fingers cased in guana skin for the bowstring, the two princes of Raghu’s house went forward like the sun and the moon among the planets, and the host around them, armed with rocks and shala and tala trees, looked like a field of corn stretching away under the morning sun. Nala and Nila and Angada and Kratha and Mainda and Dvivida protected the columns. They camped stage by stage, without interruption of any kind, in wide healthy country and in valleys full of fruit and roots and water and honey and meat, and at last the monkey host reached the shore of the salt sea and settled there beside it, a second ocean of countless colors laid against the first. Then Dasharatha’s son turned to Sugriva in front of all of them and put the question the moment required. This army is large, he said, and the ocean is difficult to cross. What means of crossing it recommends itself to you? A lot of vainglorious monkeys answered at once that they could perfectly well cross the sea, which was true of some of them and useless as a plan. Some proposed boats, some proposed rafts of various kinds. Rama talked them all down without wounding anyone. This cannot be, he said. The sea here is a full hundred yojanas wide. Not all of you heroes will be able to cross it, so the proposal is against reason. Besides, we do not have the number of boats it would take to carry all our troops, and how can men like us put such obstacles in the way of the merchants? Our army is very large; if a gap shows, the enemy will do great damage. So I do not favor crossing in boats and rafts. I will pray to the Ocean for the means instead. I will give up food and lie down on the shore, and he will certainly show himself to me. And if he does not, I will chastise him with my great weapons, which blaze hotter than fire and cannot be baffled. Having said it, Rama and Lakshmana touched water and lay down, as the rite prescribes, on a bed of kusha grass at the edge of the sea.

The Ocean came in a dream. The divine and illustrious lord of rivers, male and female, surrounded by the creatures of the water and by countless mines of gems, appeared to Rama and spoke to him in a sweet voice. Son of Kausalya, bull among men, tell me what help I am to give you. I too am sprung from the race of Ikshvaku, and so I am a kinsman of yours. Rama answered him as a kinsman and as a man with a bow. Lord of rivers, I want you to grant a road for my troops, so that I can go along it and kill the Ten-headed one, that wretch of Pulastya’s race. If you do not grant the road I ask, I will dry you up with my celestial arrows charged with mantras. The genius of Varuna’s abode joined his hands and answered in real distress. I have no wish to obstruct you. I am no enemy of yours. Listen to me, Rama, and having listened, do what is proper. If at your command I make a road for the passage of your army, then others will command me to do the same on the strength of their bows. But there is a monkey in your army named Nala, a skilled mechanic, of great strength, the son of Tvashtri, the divine artificer of the universe. Whatever he throws into my waters, wood or grass or stone, I will bear up on my surface, and so you will have your bridge. Then the Ocean vanished, and Rama woke, and called for Nala. Build a bridge across the sea, he said. I am sure you alone can do it. By that means the descendant of Kakutstha had a causeway built that was ten yojanas wide and a hundred yojanas long, and to this day, Markandeya said, it is famous all over the world as Nala’s bridge. When it was finished, Nala, whose body was as huge as a hill, came away at Rama’s command.

It was while Rama was still on the near side of the water that Vibhishana came to him: the virtuous brother of the king of the Rakshasas, with four of his counselors. Rama received him with a proper welcome. Sugriva did not; he suspected a spy, and said so. But the son of Raghu, fully satisfied by the sincerity of Vibhishana’s efforts and by the many signs of his good conduct, honored him with respect, and did more than honor him: he installed Vibhishana in the sovereignty of all the Rakshasas, made him his own junior counselor, and made him Lakshmana’s friend. And it was under Vibhishana’s guidance, king, that Rama crossed the great ocean with all his troops by way of the bridge, in the course of a month. Having crossed and come to Lanka, Rama had its wide and numerous gardens laid waste by his monkeys. Two of Ravana’s counselors and officers, Shuka and Sarana, came into the camp as spies in the shape of monkeys and were seized by Vibhishana, and when those night-rangers resumed their real Rakshasa forms, Rama showed them his army and let them go quietly, which was its own kind of message. Then, having quartered his troops in the woods that skirted the city, Rama sent the monkey Angada, a creature of great wisdom, as his envoy to Ravana.

A key to reading this (what Vyasa leaves out): In this Ramopakhyana the Ocean comes in a dream and calls himself Ikshvaku’s kinsman (the sons of Sagara dug him out, which is why he is called sagara); there is no scene of Rama’s wrath and the sea trembling under his arrows. Nala is called the son of Tvashtri, the divine artificer, rather than of Vishvakarman. There is no squirrel, and no long council over whether to accept Vibhishana; the spies Shuka and Sarana are shown the army and released, a detail Vyasa and Valmiki share. The army counts (a thousand crores, a hundred thousand crores) are the poet’s, and are there to be felt.

The gist: Sushena, Gaya, Gavaksha, Gandhamadana, Panasa, Dadhimukha and Jambavan bring their crores of monkeys and bears; with Hanuman in front and Lakshmana behind, the host reaches the sea. Rama rejects boats, lies down fasting on kusha grass, and the Ocean, appearing in a dream, names Nala; a bridge ten yojanas wide and a hundred long goes across. Vibhishana comes over with four counselors and is crowned king of the Rakshasas on the spot; the army crosses in a month, wrecks Lanka’s gardens, catches and releases two spies, and Angada is sent in as envoy.

Angada’s embassy, monkeys on the walls of Lanka, the deaths of Prahasta and Dhumraksha, and the waking of Kumbhakarna

Rama settled his army in groves that had food and water and fruit and roots enough, and watched over it carefully, and on the other side of the wall Ravana did what a king who has read the manuals does. He filled his city with engines built by the rules of the military science. Lanka was impregnable by nature, with its strong ramparts and gateways, and he made it more so: seven trenches, deep and brimming with water, alive with fish and sharks and alligators, spiked with pointed stakes of khadira wood. The ramparts were heaped with stones and armed with catapults. The men who held the walls carried earthen pots full of venomous snakes and resinous powders of many kinds, and clubs and firebrands and arrows and lances and swords and battle-axes, and shataghnis, and stout maces steeped in wax. At every gate stood fixed and movable camps manned by infantry and backed by elephants and horses beyond counting. Into this, alone, walked Angada. He was announced at one of the gates and entered the town without suspicion or fear, and surrounded by countless Rakshasas the young hero in his beauty looked like the sun among banked clouds. He came before the hero of Pulastya’s race in the midst of his counselors, saluted the king, and delivered Rama’s message in Rama’s words. That descendant of Raghu, king, who rules at Kosala and whose fame has spread over the whole world, sends you these words suited to the occasion; accept them and act on them. Provinces and towns are polluted and destroyed by their connection with sinful kings who cannot control their souls. By the violent abduction of Sita you have injured me alone, but you will become the cause of death to many who have done nothing. Full of power and pride, you have killed many rishis living in the woods before this, and insulted the very gods; you have killed great kings and weeping women. For those transgressions the reckoning is about to overtake you. I will kill you with your counselors. Fight, and show your courage. Night-ranger, see the power of my bow, though I am only a man. Release Sita, Janaka’s daughter. If you do not, I will empty the earth of Rakshasas with my keen-edged arrows. Ravana heard the defiance and went senseless with rage, and four Rakshasas who could read every sign of their master seized Angada like four hawks seizing a tiger. With the four of them holding his limbs, Angada leaped, and landed on the palace terrace, and the force of the leap threw the night-rangers off him to the ground, where the fall broke their ribs. From the golden terrace he leaped down again, cleared the walls of Lanka, and landed among his comrades; and having told the lord of Kosala everything, the monkey Angada of great energy was dismissed with honor and went to refresh himself.

Then the siege began in earnest. Raghu’s descendant had the ramparts of Lanka broken down by a united attack of all those monkeys who moved with the speed of the wind. Lakshmana, with Vibhishana and the king of the bears in his van, blew open the southern gate, which had been thought almost impregnable. Rama attacked with a hundred thousand crores of monkeys, all skilled in battle, reddish as young camels, and behind them crores of grayish bears with long arms and legs and huge paws, the kind that sit back on their broad haunches, were urged in to support the assault. The monkeys leaped up and leaped down and leaped sideways, and the dust they raised shaded the sun’s whole disc until it could not be seen. The citizens of Lanka looked at their wall and saw it turn tawny from end to end, covered with monkeys yellow as ears of paddy, gray as shirisha flowers, red as the rising sun, white as flax or hemp, and the Rakshasas with their wives and elders stood and wondered at the sight. The monkeys tore out pillars of precious stone and the terraces and tops of the mansions; they smashed the propellers of the catapults and the other engines into pieces and flung them in every direction; they picked up the shataghnis along with the discs and clubs and stones and hurled them down into the city with tremendous noise. The Rakshasas posted on the walls fled by hundreds and thousands. Then, at the king’s command, hundreds of thousands of Rakshasas of terrible mien, able to take any form at will, came out, and pouring a perfect shower of arrows and driving back the dwellers of the forest, they made a display of their prowess and took the ramparts back. Those night-rangers looked like heaps of flesh, and soon they had forced the monkeys off the walls. Monkey chiefs, mangled by the enemy’s lances, fell from the ramparts; Rakshasas, crushed by falling columns and gateways, fell and did not rise. Monkeys and Rakshasas who had begun to eat one another fought seizing one another by the hair, tearing with nails and teeth, roaring and yelling frightfully, and many on both sides died, and neither side gave up. All the while Rama poured down arrows like the clouds, and the arrows he shot enveloped Lanka and killed Rakshasas in large numbers, and Sumitra’s son, the great bowman who did not tire in battle, called out particular Rakshasas standing on the ramparts by name and killed them with his cloth-yard shafts. Then, with the fortifications of Lanka pulled down and everything inside the city now within reach of the besiegers’ aim, Rama, satisfied, ordered the monkey host withdrawn.

The withdrawn troops were resting in their quarters when the small things came. Little Rakshasas and Pishachas who took Ravana for their leader slipped in among them, invisible: Parvana, Patana, Jambha, Khara, Krodhavasa, Hari, Praruja, Aruja, Praghasa and others. Vibhishana knew of it, because Vibhishana knew his brother’s tricks, and he broke the spell of their invisibility, and once the strong, far-leaping monkeys could see them they killed every one and laid them out lifeless on the earth. That was more than Ravana could bear. He marched out at the head of his troops, ringed by his terrible army of Rakshasas and Pishachas, and being as learned in the rules of warfare as a second Ushanas, he invested the monkey host with his forces disposed in the array that bears Ushanas’ name. Rama, seeing him come in that formation, drew up his own army in the counter-array recommended by Brihaspati. Ravana came on fast and engaged Rama himself. Lakshmana singled out Indrajit. Sugriva took Virupaksha; Nikharvata fought Tara, Nala fought Tunda, Patusa fought Panasa; and every warrior went up to the man he judged his match and fought him on the strength of his own arms, until that field, terrifying to the timid, became as fierce as the war of the gods and the Asuras in the old days. Ravana covered Rama with a shower of darts and lances and swords, and Rama afflicted Ravana with whetted iron arrows of the sharpest points; Lakshmana struck Indrajit with shafts that go for the vitals, and Indrajit answered with a storm of arrows; Vibhishana and Prahasta rained winged, sharp-pointed arrows on each other without the slightest regard for anything else. Celestial weapons met celestial weapons, and the three worlds with everything that moves and everything that stands still in them were sorely distressed.

Prahasta ended it between himself and Vibhishana by charging in suddenly with a yell and striking him with his mace. The blow had terrible force behind it, and the mighty-armed Vibhishana, who was as wise as he was strong, did not waver at all; he stood like the mountains of Himavat. Then he took up a huge, heavy javelin hung with a hundred bells, charged it with mantras, and hurled it at his adversary’s head, and the weapon went with the force of the thunderbolt and took Prahasta’s head off, so that the night-ranger looked like a great tree snapped by the wind. Dhumraksha saw him fall and rushed the monkey host at once, and his soldiers, cloud-dark and terrible, came on in such a mass that the monkey chiefs broke and ran. Then Hanuman, tiger among monkeys, son of Pavana, walked forward, and when the retreating monkeys saw the son of the Wind standing still on the field, every one of them turned and rallied. The uproar of Rama’s warriors and Ravana’s warriors rushing at one another was mighty and fearful, and the ground of that battle soon turned to a mire of blood. Dhumraksha lashed the monkeys with volleys of winged shafts, and Hanuman went straight at the Rakshasa leader as he advanced and seized him, and the encounter between those two, each bent on the other’s defeat, was as fierce as Indra’s with Prahlada in the old days: the Rakshasa struck the monkey with maces and spiked clubs, the monkey struck the Rakshasa with tree trunks, branches and all. Then Hanuman, in a great wrath, killed him, and his charioteer, and his horses, and broke his chariot into pieces. The monkeys saw Dhumraksha, that foremost of Rakshasas, dead, and lost every fear, and threw themselves on the Rakshasa army with such valor that the Rakshasas, slaughtered in large numbers, lost heart and fled to Lanka in terror. The wreck of that army reached the city and told King Ravana everything, and when he heard that Prahasta and the mighty archer Dhumraksha were both dead with their forces, killed by monkeys, Ravana drew a deep sigh and sprang up from his excellent seat and said: the time has come for Kumbhakarna to act. With loud-sounding instruments of many kinds he woke his brother from his deep and prolonged slumber, and it took great effort, and when Kumbhakarna sat up at his ease on his bed with his consciousness and self-possession fully recovered, the Rakshasa king, still eaten with anxiety, spoke to him. You are a happy man, Kumbhakarna, who can sleep so deep and undisturbed, knowing nothing of the terrible calamity that has overtaken us. Rama has crossed the ocean with his monkey host by a bridge and is waging a terrible war on us as if we were nobody. I brought away his wife Sita, Janaka’s daughter, by stealth, and it is to recover her that he has come here, bridging the great ocean to do it. Our great kinsmen, Prahasta and the others, are already dead at his hands. Scourge of your enemies, there is no one but you who can kill Rama. So put on your armor, warrior, and go out this very day to vanquish Rama and his followers. The two younger brothers of Dushana, Vajravega and Pramathin, will join you with their forces. He gave those two their instructions, and they accepted them, and the warlike brothers of Dushana marched quickly out of the city with Kumbhakarna going before them.

A key to reading this (names and arrays): Ushanas is Shukra, the preceptor of the Asuras, and Brihaspati is the preceptor of the gods, so Ravana forms up in the demons’ teacher’s array and Rama in the gods’ teacher’s. A shataghni is an engine said to be built to kill a hundred at once. In Vyasa’s telling Prahasta dies at Vibhishana’s hands and Dhumraksha at Hanuman’s; in Valmiki it is Nila who kills Prahasta. The waking of Kumbhakarna, a long and famous scene in Valmiki, is a few lines here, done with musical instruments, and Dushana’s brothers Vajravega and Pramathin, who go out with him, do not appear under those names in Valmiki’s story.

The gist: Angada walks into a Lanka ringed with seven trenches and engines, delivers Rama’s ultimatum, and leaves by leaping onto the palace roof with four Rakshasas hanging off him. The monkeys tear down the ramparts, Lakshmana breaks the southern gate, the walls turn the colors of the monkeys covering them, the Rakshasas push them back, and Rama withdraws once the city lies open to his arrows. Vibhishana unmasks the invisible Pishachas; Ravana comes out in Ushanas’ array and the champions pair off; Vibhishana’s mantra-charged javelin takes Prahasta’s head, Hanuman kills Dhumraksha chariot and all, and Ravana says it is time for Kumbhakarna.

Kumbhakarna dies at Lakshmana’s hands, and Indrajit’s net of arrows closes over both brothers

Kumbhakarna came out of the city with his followers behind him, Markandeya said, and the first thing he saw was the monkey camp, spread out and confident, an army that had already won its opening battles. He walked past it. He was looking for Rama, and he walked through the ranks the way a man walks through tall grass, and what he found at the end of his walk was the son of Sumitra, standing at his post with a bow in his hand. The monkeys closed on him from every side before he could reach Lakshmana. They hit him with whole trees. Some of them, fearless, climbed him and tore at his skin with their nails; they fought him in every way the laws of war allow and buried him in weapons of every kind. Kumbhakarna laughed at all of it and began to eat them. He swallowed Chala and Chandachala and Vajrabahu, monkeys of the first rank, and the others, watching those three go into his mouth, screamed with a terror that carried across the field. Sugriva heard the scream and came at once, without fear, and struck Kumbhakarna on the head with the trunk of a sala tree so hard that the tree broke. The blow made no mark at all. It seemed only to wake him. Kumbhakarna reached out and took the king of the monkeys in his hands and started to drag him away.

Lakshmana, who delights his friends, saw Sugriva being carried off and ran at the Rakshasa. He loosed a single great arrow with golden wings, and the arrow went through Kumbhakarna’s mail, through his body, out the other side and into the earth, wet with the Rakshasa’s blood. Bored through the chest, Kumbhakarna let Sugriva go. He picked up a boulder and came at Lakshmana with it raised, and Lakshmana cut off both his raised arms with two razor-headed shafts. Where two arms had been, four grew. Lakshmana cut those too, with the same kind of arrows, each arm still gripping its stone as it fell. Then the Rakshasa gave up the shape of a man altogether. He became enormous, a thing of many heads and legs and arms, a moving range of hills, and Lakshmana split it with the weapon of Brahma. The celestial weapon opened him, and he fell across the field like a great spreading tree struck down by lightning out of a clear sky. When the Rakshasa soldiers saw Kumbhakarna, who had the look of Vritra himself, lying dead, they ran. The younger brother of Dushana rallied them, and then two of Dushana’s younger brothers, Vajravega and Pramathin, came at Lakshmana together in a fury. Lakshmana roared and met them with winged shafts. That fight, Markandeya said, between the two brothers of Dushana on one side and the quick-witted Lakshmana on the other, raised the hair of everyone who watched it: Lakshmana drowning the two of them in arrows, the two of them answering with a hail of their own. It did not last. Hanuman, son of the Wind, picked up a mountain peak and killed Vajravega with it, and the great monkey Nala crushed Pramathin under a mass of rock. And still the war between Rama’s people and Ravana’s did not pause for any of this; it went on exactly as before, hundreds of Rakshasas dying under the forest-dwellers, many monkeys dying under the Rakshasas, and the dead on the Rakshasa side far outnumbering the dead on the other.

In the city, the news arrived in a single package: Kumbhakarna fallen with his followers, the great Prahasta dead, Dhumraksha of the fierce energy dead. Ravana turned to his son. Slayer of enemies, he said to Indrajit, kill Rama and Sugriva and Lakshmana in battle. It was you who won me the blazing fame I have, when you beat the wielder of the thunderbolt, the thousand-eyed lord of Shachi. You can appear and vanish as you please; with the celestial arrows the gods gave you as boons, best of all who bear weapons, kill my enemies. Rama and Lakshmana and Sugriva cannot bear even the touch of your weapons, so what are their followers to you? The end of this war that neither Prahasta nor Kumbhakarna could bring about, mighty-armed one, let it be yours to bring. Kill my enemies and their whole army with your sharp shafts and give me joy today, son, as you did once before by defeating Vasava. So be it, Indrajit said. He put on his armor, mounted his chariot and drove to the field, and there that bull among Rakshasas shouted his own name aloud and challenged Lakshmana, marked with every auspicious sign, to single combat. Lakshmana came at him with bow and arrows, and the slap of his bowstring against the leather guard on his left hand put fear into the Rakshasa’s heart before the first shaft flew. Both of them knew the celestial weapons. Each defied the other’s prowess and each meant to win, and the fight between them was terrible past describing. When Ravana’s son found that his arrows were gaining him nothing, he gathered all his strength and began to hurl javelins at Lakshmana, countless javelins, with enormous force. Lakshmana cut them to pieces in the air with his keen-edged shafts, and the fragments dropped to the ground.

Then Angada, Vali’s handsome son, took up a large tree, ran at Indrajit and brought it down on his head. Indrajit, undaunted, reached for a lance to strike Angada with, and at that instant Lakshmana cut the lance in pieces in his hand. Ravana’s son took up a mace instead and struck Angada, who was standing close beside him, on the left flank, a blow the powerful son of Vali barely noticed. Angada answered by hurling a whole sala trunk at him, and that tree, thrown in anger for Indrajit’s destruction, smashed Indrajit’s chariot along with its horses and its charioteer. Ravana’s son jumped down from the wreck and vanished. He had the power of illusion, and he used it. Rama, seeing the Rakshasa disappear so suddenly, came over to that part of the field and set himself to guard his troops. It was no use. From nowhere, from everywhere, Indrajit’s arrows, the ones the gods had given him, began to enter Rama and Lakshmana in every part of their bodies. The two brothers fought back with arrows against an enemy they could not see, and Indrajit, invisible, poured his shafts over those two lions among men by the hundred and the thousand. The monkeys went up into the sky with boulders in their hands, searching every quarter of it for the archer who never stopped shooting, and the invisible Rakshasa cut them down too. Hidden inside his illusion, Ravana’s son fell on the monkey host in a rage. And Rama and Lakshmana, pierced through and through, went down on the earth like the sun and the moon fallen out of the sky. Ravana’s son bound them where they lay in a net of the arrows he had received as boons, and tied inside that net the two tigers among men looked like a pair of hawks shut in a cage. Sugriva and all the monkeys came and stood around them, Sushena and Mainda and Dvivida, Kumuda and Angada, Hanuman and Nila and Tara and Nala, a ring of monkeys around two men shot full of arrows, and no one yet knowing what to do.

A key to reading this (Vyasa’s Rama and Valmiki’s): In this telling Kumbhakarna is killed by Lakshmana, with the weapon of Brahma; in Valmiki’s Ramayana he dies at Rama’s hands. There is no six-month sleep here, no scene of drums and elephants to wake him, no conversation between Kumbhakarna and Sita; Markandeya goes straight to the fighting. Indrajit’s old victory over Indra, which gives him his name, appears here only as his father’s memory of it. The fuller war of Valmiki’s Yuddha Kanda is on the site’s Ramayana pages; this chapter tells only what Vyasa has Markandeya tell Yudhishthira.

The gist: Kumbhakarna eats monkeys and drags Sugriva off until Lakshmana shoots him through, cuts his arms as fast as they grow back, and finishes his mountainous last shape with the Brahma weapon; Hanuman and Nala crush Dushana’s brothers. Ravana sends Indrajit, who cannot beat Lakshmana face to face, loses his chariot to Angada’s tree, vanishes by illusion, and from the unseen air shoots both brothers down and binds them in a net of arrows.

Kubera’s water, the death of Indrajit, Avindhya’s restraint, and Rama’s Brahma weapon from Indra’s chariot

Vibhishana had been winning in another part of the field, Markandeya said, and when he reached the ring of monkeys he did the one thing none of them had thought of. He used the weapon called Prajna, and it brought the two brothers up out of their stupor. Sugriva drew the arrows out of their bodies, and with the herb called Vishalya, the most potent of all medicines, applied with celestial mantras, the two human heroes came back to themselves. The moment the shafts were out they rose from the ground, all pain and weariness gone as if it had never been. Vibhishana saw the descendant of Ikshvaku at his ease, joined his hands, and told him what he had brought. At the command of the king of the Guhyakas, chastiser of foes, a Guhyaka has come from the White Mountain carrying his water. Great king, this water is Kuvera’s gift to you, so that every invisible creature may become visible to you. Washed over the eyes, it will make every unseen thing seen, for you and for anyone you give it to. So be it, Rama said. He took the sacred water and sanctified his own eyes with it, and high-minded Lakshmana did the same, and Sugriva and Jambavan, Hanuman and Angada, Mainda and Dvivida, Nila and many other leaders of the monkeys washed their eyes. And it happened exactly as Vibhishana had said, Markandeya told Yudhishthira: all their eyes could now see what the unaided eye cannot.

Indrajit, after his success, had gone to his father to report it, and now he came back to the field quickly and put himself at the head of his army, wanting the fight. The son of Sumitra, with Vibhishana guiding him, went at Ravana’s angry son as he returned to lead the attack. Vibhishana gave him a hint, and the hint was the whole battle: Indrajit had not yet completed his daily sacrifice. Lakshmana, burning, struck with his arrows at a warrior who was himself burning for victory, and the encounter between the two of them, each meaning to beat the other, was as wonderful as the ancient fight between the lord of the gods and Prahlada. Indrajit pierced Lakshmana with arrows that went to his vitals; Lakshmana pierced Ravana’s son with arrows of fiery energy, and under them Indrajit lost his senses to rage and shot eight shafts at Lakshmana, fierce as venomous snakes. Now hear, Markandeya said, how the heroic son of Sumitra took his enemy’s life with three winged arrows that had the energy and the brightness of fire. With the first he severed the arm that held the bow. With the second he brought the other arm, the one that held the arrows, down to the ground. With the third, bright and edged keener than any, he cut off the head with its handsome nose and its shining earrings. Without arms and without a head the trunk was a fearful thing to look at. Having killed the man, that foremost of the mighty killed his charioteer too, and the horses dragged the empty chariot back into the city.

Ravana saw the chariot come home without his son on it. When they told him the boy was dead his heart went under, and out of that extremity of grief a wish rose in him, sudden and complete: to kill the princess of Mithila. He seized a sword and ran, this wicked Rakshasa, toward the woman in the ashoka grove who was waiting there only to see her husband again. Avindhya saw the sinful purpose in him and talked him down, and Yudhishthira, Markandeya said, listen to the reasons Avindhya urged. Seated on the blazing throne of an empire, that wise Rakshasa said, you cannot kill a woman. Besides, this woman is already dead, since she is a captive in your power; I do not think she would be any more killed if her body were destroyed. Kill her husband. When he is dead, she is dead. Truly, not even Indra of the hundred sacrifices is your equal in prowess; the gods with Indra at their head have been frightened by you in battle again and again. With these words and many more like them Avindhya succeeded in appeasing Ravana, and Ravana listened to his counselor. He sheathed his sword. Then that wanderer of the night resolved to fight himself, and gave the order for his chariot.

The ten-necked one, mad with fury at his beloved son’s death, mounted his chariot of gold and gems and drove at Rama, surrounded by terrible Rakshasas with every kind of weapon in their hands, fighting his way through one monkey chief after another. Mainda and Nila and Nala and Angada, Hanuman and Jambavan saw him coming in his wrath and closed around him with all their troops, and those foremost of monkeys and bears began to exterminate his soldiers with tree trunks in his very sight. Ravana, seeing his army cut down in front of him, put forth his illusion. Out of his body came Rakshasas by the hundred and the thousand, armed with arrows and lances and double-edged swords, and Rama killed every one of them with a celestial weapon. The king of the Rakshasas tried his illusion a second time. Out of his body, Markandeya said, the ten-faced one produced warriors who looked like Rama and warriors who looked like Lakshmana, and sent them, with bows and arrows, against the two brothers. The son of Sumitra looked at that, at an army of his brother’s own face coming at his brother, and said the heroic thing: kill those Rakshasas, those wretches wearing forms like your own. Rama did; he killed the ones that looked like him and the others too. And then, at that moment, Matali, Indra’s charioteer, drove up to Rama across the field in a chariot that shone like the sun, with tawny horses yoked to it. Son of Kakutstha’s line, Matali said, this excellent and victorious chariot with its pair of tawny horses belongs to the lord of the gods. On this chariot, tiger among men, Indra has slain hundreds of Daityas and Danavas in battle. Ride on it, with me driving, and kill Ravana quickly. Do not delay. And Rama, the descendant of Raghu, did not believe him. He had just watched an army of his own doubles come out of Ravana’s body, and he took Matali’s true words for one more illusion of the Rakshasas. It was Vibhishana who settled it. This, tiger among men, is no illusion of the wicked Ravana. Mount this chariot quickly, brilliant one; it belongs to Indra. So be it, Rama said to Vibhishana, cheerfully now, and mounted and drove at Ravana in wrath. Ravana drove at him. A wail of woe went up from the creatures of the earth, and in heaven the gods gave a lion’s roar and beat their great drums.

What followed between the ten-necked Rakshasa and the prince of Raghu’s line was fierce past all measure; there is no parallel to it anywhere. The Rakshasa hurled at Rama a terrible javelin that looked like Indra’s thunderbolt, like a Brahmin’s curse at the instant of utterance, and Rama cut it to fragments in flight with his sharp arrows. That most difficult feat frightened Ravana, but fear turned quickly to fury, and the ten-necked hero began to rain on Rama whetted arrows by the thousand and the ten thousand and weapons beyond counting, rockets and javelins and maces and battle-axes and darts of every kind and shataghnis and sharpened shafts. Under that terrible display the monkeys broke and ran in every direction. Then the descendant of Kakutstha took from his quiver one excellent arrow, with handsome wings and golden feathers and a bright, beautiful head, and set it on his bow with the mantra of the Brahma weapon. The gods and the Gandharvas, with Indra at their head, saw that arrow transformed by the proper mantras into the weapon of Brahma and rejoiced, and the gods and the Danavas and the Kinnaras understood from that one sight that their Rakshasa enemy’s life was all but over. Rama shot it: the weapon of unrivaled energy, destined for Ravana’s death, like the curse of a Brahmin on the point of utterance. The moment it left the bow drawn to a full circle, the king of the Rakshasas, with his chariot and his charioteer and his horses, blazed up, wrapped on every side in a terrific fire. The gods and the Gandharvas and the Charanas rejoiced to see Ravana slain by Rama of the famous deeds. Stripped by the energy of the Brahma weapon of the dominion he had held over the worlds, the five elements forsook the illustrious Ravana. The physical ingredients of his body were consumed by that weapon; his flesh and blood were reduced to nothing, so completely that not even ashes could be seen.

A key to reading this (what is here and what is not): Indrajit dies here, as in Valmiki, before he can finish his sacrifice, but this telling has no Nikumbhila grove and no wrecking of the rite by Hanuman; Vibhishana’s hint is the whole of it. Ravana’s ten heads growing back, the Aditya Hridaya taught by Agastya, and the long single combat of Valmiki’s Yuddha Kanda are absent; here one Brahma weapon burns him so completely that no ash remains. The water from Kuvera that makes the invisible visible is Vyasa’s own detail. Matali and Indra’s chariot are in Valmiki too, but there Rama does not suspect them of being an illusion. Prajna is the name of the weapon that restores consciousness; Vishalya is a healing herb whose name means “arrow-remover.”

The gist: Vibhishana wakes the brothers with the Prajna weapon and the herb Vishalya, and Kuvera’s water lets everyone see the unseen. On Vibhishana’s hint Lakshmana kills Indrajit, whose sacrifice is unfinished, with three arrows. Ravana, half mad, goes for Sita with a sword and is talked out of it by Avindhya. Then he comes out himself, conjures armies and even doubles of Rama and Lakshmana; Matali brings Indra’s chariot, Rama doubts it until Vibhishana vouches for it, and one Brahma weapon burns Ravana, chariot and all, to nothing.

Sita cleared by the five elements, the return to Ayodhya on the Pushpaka, and Markandeya’s comfort to Yudhishthira

With Ravana dead, Markandeya said, Rama and his friends and the son of Sumitra rejoiced beyond measure. The gods, with the rishis at their head, worshiped the mighty-armed Rama and blessed him and said the word Jaya over and over; all the celestials and the Gandharvas and the dwellers in the heavenly regions gladdened the lotus-eyed hero with hymns and showers of flowers, and having honored him duly they went back to the regions they had come from. The sky that day, Markandeya told the king, looked as though a great festival were being held in it. Then Rama, the conqueror of hostile cities whose fame filled the world, gave Lanka to Vibhishana. And out of the city came a procession of three: Vibhishana in front, Sita walking behind him, and behind Sita the old and wise counselor of Ravana whose name was Avindhya. With great humility Avindhya said to the illustrious descendant of Kakutstha, illustrious one, accept this goddess, Janaka’s daughter of excellent conduct.

Rama got down from his chariot and looked at Sita. She was bathed in tears. She sat in her vehicle stricken with grief, smeared with filth, her hair matted, her robes dirty, and Rama, afraid for his honor, said to her the words that this telling does not soften. Daughter of Videha, go wherever you like. You are free now. What I had to do, I have done. Blessed lady, it was not right that you, who have me for a husband, should grow old in the house of a Rakshasa; that is why I killed that wanderer of the night. But how can a man like me, who knows every truth of dharma, embrace even for a moment a woman who has been in another’s hands? Princess of Mithila, whether you are chaste or unchaste, I dare not take you, now that you are like sacrificial butter a dog has lapped. When she heard those cruel words the adorable girl fell down where she was, struck through the heart, like a plantain tree cut from its roots. The color that joy had put into her face went out of it as quickly as a breath fades off a mirror. And all the monkeys, and Lakshmana with them, went as still as the dead. Then the four-faced Brahma, the pure-souled creator of the universe, born of the lotus, showed himself to Raghu’s son on his chariot; and Shakra and Agni and Vayu, and Yama and Varuna and the illustrious lord of the Yakshas, and the holy rishis, and king Dasharatha himself in a celestial, shining form on a chariot drawn by swans. The sky, crowded with gods and Gandharvas, was as beautiful as an autumn night thick with stars.

Sita rose from the ground. In front of all of them she spoke to Rama of the broad chest. Prince, I lay no fault on you, for you know well how one should behave toward men and toward women. But hear what I say. The ever-moving Air is present in every creature. If I have sinned, let him forsake my life-breath. If I have sinned, let Fire, and Water, and Space, and Earth, like the Air I have already called on, forsake my life-breath too. And as I have never, even in a dream, held the image of any other person in my heart, hero, so be you my lord, as the gods have appointed. When she had finished, a sacred voice sounded through the whole region, gladdening the hearts of the high-souled monkeys, and it was the Wind-god’s. Son of Raghu, what Sita has said is true. I am the god of Wind. The princess of Mithila is sinless. Therefore, king, be united with your wife. The god of Fire spoke next: son of Raghu, I dwell in the bodies of all creatures; descendant of Kakutstha, the princess of Mithila is not guilty of the smallest fault. Then Varuna: son of Raghu, the humors in every creature’s body take their existence from me; I tell you, let the princess of Mithila be accepted by you. Then Brahma himself. Descendant of Kakutstha, my son, in one as honest and pure as you, learned in the duties of royal sages, this conduct is no wonder. But listen to me. You have killed, hero, the enemy of the gods, the Gandharvas, the Nagas, the Yakshas, the Danavas and the great rishis. It was by my grace that until now no creature could kill him, and there was a reason I tolerated him for a time. The wretch carried off Sita for his own destruction. As for Sita, I protected her through Nalakuvara’s curse, for Nalakuvara had cursed Ravana long ago that if he ever forced himself on an unwilling woman his head would split into a hundred pieces. Let no suspicion be yours. Take back your wife, you of great glory; you have done a mighty deed for the good of the gods, you whose radiance is divine. And last of all Dasharatha spoke. I am pleased with you, child. Blessed be you; I am your father Dasharatha. I command you to take back your wife and rule your kingdom, foremost of men. Rama answered: if you are my father, I bow to you with reverence, king of kings. At your command I will indeed return to the lovely city of Ayodhya.

His father, Markandeya said, was glad to hear it, and answered Rama, whose eyes were red at the corners: return to Ayodhya and rule that kingdom; your fourteen years are complete, you of great glory. Rama bowed to the gods, and greeted by his friends he was reunited with his wife, as the lord of the gods with Puloman’s daughter. He gave Avindhya a boon, and he gave the Rakshasa woman Trijata riches and honor. When Brahma and all the gods with Indra at their head asked him what boons after his own heart they should grant him, Rama asked for firm adherence to virtue and for invincibility against all enemies, and he asked that all the monkeys the Rakshasas had killed be restored to life; Brahma said, so be it, and the monkeys got up alive from the battlefield. Sita, of great good fortune, gave Hanuman a boon of her own: let your life, son, last as long as the fame of Rama’s deeds, and, yellow-eyed Hanuman, let celestial food and drink be always yours through my grace. Then the gods with Indra at their head vanished before the eyes of those warriors of spotless deeds. Shakra’s charioteer, delighted to see Rama united with Janaka’s daughter, spoke to him in the midst of his friends. You whose prowess can never be baffled, you have dispelled the sorrow of the gods, the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, the Asuras, the Nagas and human beings; for as long as the earth holds together, all creatures, with the gods and the Asuras and the Gandharvas and the Yakshas and the Rakshasas and the Pannagas, will speak of you. Matali worshiped Raghu’s son, took his leave of that foremost of all who bear weapons, and went away on the same sun-bright chariot he had come in.

Rama went home the way he had come, and Markandeya gave Yudhishthira the whole itinerary. With the son of Sumitra and Vibhishana, with all the monkeys under Sugriva, with Sita in the van and Lanka’s defense arranged, he recrossed the ocean by the same bridge, riding the beautiful sky-going chariot called Pushpaka that went wherever its rider wished, his chief counselors around him in order of rank. At the place on the shore where he had once lain down he pitched camp with all the monkeys, and there in due time he called the monkeys before him, honored every one of them, gratified them with gifts of jewels and gems and dismissed them one after another. When the monkey chiefs and the cow-tailed apes and the bears had all gone, Rama went with Sugriva to Kishkindha, on the Pushpaka with Sugriva and Vibhishana beside him, showing the princess of Videha the forests along the way, and at Kishkindha that foremost of smiters installed the victorious Angada as prince regent. Then, with the same friends and with Lakshmana, he went on toward his own city by the road he had taken out of it. Near Ayodhya he sent Hanuman ahead as envoy to Bharata. Hanuman read Bharata’s mind from the outward signs and gave him the good news, and when the son of the Wind came back Rama entered Nandigrama. There he saw Bharata, smeared with filth, dressed in rags, seated with his elder brother’s sandals placed before him. Rama and Lakshmana, reunited with Bharata and Shatrughna, rejoiced beyond measure, and Bharata and Shatrughna, reunited with their eldest brother and seeing Sita, felt the same. Bharata worshiped his returned brother and handed back to him, gladly, the kingdom he had held as a sacred trust. Vasishtha and Vamadeva together installed the hero as king of Ayodhya at the eighth muhurta of the day, under the asterism Shravana. When the installation was over Rama gave leave to Sugriva, king of the monkeys, glad with all his followers, and to rejoicing Vibhishana of Pulastya’s line, to go home; he honored them with every article of enjoyment, did everything the occasion called for, and sent his friends away with a sorrowful heart. He worshiped the Pushpaka chariot and gave it back, joyfully, to Vaishravana. And with the celestial rishi Vasishtha to assist him, Rama performed on the banks of the Gomati ten horse sacrifices, without obstruction of any kind, with threefold gifts to the Brahmins.

That, mighty-armed one, Markandeya said, is how Rama of immeasurable energy suffered such extreme calamity long ago because of his exile in the woods. Do not grieve, tiger among men. You are a Kshatriya, chastiser of foes; you too walk the path on which the strength of arms is put forth, the path that leads to tangible rewards. There is not a particle of sin in you. The gods with Indra at their head, and the Asuras, must walk the road you are walking. It was after afflictions like these that the wielder of the thunderbolt, helped by the Maruts, killed Vritra and the invincible Namuchi and the long-tongued Rakshasi. The man who has allies always accomplishes his purposes; and what cannot be beaten in battle by a man who has Dhananjaya for a brother? This Bhima of the terrible prowess is the foremost of the mighty. The young and heroic sons of Madri are great bowmen. With allies like these, why do you despair? They could defeat the army of the thunderbolt’s wielder with the Maruts in its midst. With these mighty bowmen of celestial form for your allies, bull of Bharata’s race, you are certain to conquer all your enemies in battle. Look: Krishna, Drupada’s daughter, carried off by the wicked Saindhava out of pride in his strength, was brought back by these warriors after terrible feats, and king Jayadratha lay beaten and helpless before you. The princess of Videha was rescued by Rama with almost no allies, after he had killed the ten-necked Rakshasa of terrible prowess in battle; his allies in that contest were monkeys and black-faced bears, creatures that were not even human. Think of all this in your mind, king. Do not grieve for anything that has happened, foremost of Kurus; illustrious men like you never give themselves to sorrow. So, Vaishampayana said, the king was comforted by Markandeya, and casting off his sorrow, that high-souled man spoke to Markandeya once more.

A key to reading this (Sita’s vindication, according to Vyasa): There is no fire ordeal in this telling. Sita calls the five elements to witness, Air, Fire, Water, Space and Earth, and Vayu, Agni and Varuna answer from the sky; Brahma explains that Nalakuvara’s curse kept Ravana from touching her; Dasharatha gives the order to take her back. In Valmiki’s Ramayana Sita enters the fire and Agni returns her; that scene is on the site’s Ramayana pages. Trijata and Avindhya are rewarded here, and Sita’s boon to Hanuman of long life and celestial food is Vyasa’s detail, as are the installation by Vasishtha and Vamadeva under Shravana and the ten horse sacrifices on the Gomati. Puloman’s daughter is Shachi, Indra’s wife; Vaishravana is Kuvera, the Pushpaka’s owner; Saindhava is Jayadratha, whose abduction of Draupadi is the reason Yudhishthira asked for this story.

The gist: Rama gives Lanka to Vibhishana and then, before everyone, tells the weeping Sita she is free to go. Sita calls the five elements to witness; Vayu, Agni, Varuna, Brahma and Dasharatha himself declare her sinless from the sky, and Rama takes her back. The dead monkeys rise, Sita blesses Hanuman, and the Pushpaka carries them all home by way of Kishkindha to Nandigrama, where Bharata waits with the sandals. Rama is crowned and performs ten horse sacrifices. And Markandeya turns to Yudhishthira: Rama had monkeys and bears; you have Arjuna and Bhima. Do not grieve.

Source: the Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vana Parva. This chapter follows K. M. Ganguli, sections CCLXXII-CCXC (272-290); the Gita Press Hindi edition numbers these chapters differently. Names, order, and events were checked against Ganguli’s complete translation. Dialogue and commentary are adapted, not a verbatim translation. About the sources.