Vibhishana

Three Times in Council, Then in the Air

In Yuddha Kanda 6 to 16, in a Lanka with scorch marks on it, Ravana asks his friends for counsel, and Vibhishana says the one thing no one in the hall is saying: “King, who has tied to your neck this great serpent that is Sita, its coils her bosom, its poison her brooding thought, its sharp fangs her sweet smile, its five hoods her five fingers?” “Let the princess of Mithila be given back to the son of Dasharatha.” Prahasta laughs at the idea of fearing one man, the son of a king of men; then Indrajit, his brother’s son, stands up and calls him “the one man in this whole line without courage, virility, prowess, fortitude, heroism, or fire.” Vibhishana calls the boy a boy, “your judgment still unripe,” and says it a third time, in the same room, to the same man: “King, give Rama riches, gems, fine ornaments, heavenly garments, wondrous jewels, and the goddess-like Sita, and let us all live here free of grief.” Ravana answers with a speech on kinsmen that ends, “a curse on you, stain of our line!” Vibhishana rises into the sky with his mace and his four ministers and speaks from there. “Being the elder, you are worthy of honor like a father, but you do not stand on the path of dharma; so I cannot bear this abuse of yours, elder though you are.” “Those who ever speak sweetly are easily found; the speaker and the hearer of unpleasant but wholesome words are rare.” And the farewell: “May it go well with you; I am leaving. Be happy without me.”

In sarga 17 he crosses in an hour the water that has stopped an army for days and halts in the air over the northern shore, above a host holding rocks. From there he calls down: “There is a rakshasa of evil conduct, Ravana by name; I am his younger brother, known as Vibhishana.” “He insulted me, treating me like a slave, and spoke harsh words; so I have left my sons and wife and come to Raghava for refuge.” Below, Sugriva tells Rama that this is Ravana’s spy and should be seized, and Rama opens the floor. Hanuman, the only creature on that beach who has watched this man argue for an enemy in Ravana’s own court, says, “As he speaks, no wicked intent shows; his face too is glad, and so I have no doubt of him.” Rama gives his own mind: “One who comes to me in friendship I will not forsake by any means.” Sugriva says the sharpest thing said on that beach all day, “One who has left his own brother in such a plight, whom would he not leave?” and Rama, smiling a little toward Lakshmana, answers with his own family: “Not all brothers are like Bharata, nor all sons like me, nor all friends like you.” Then the vow, “To one who comes to me even once for refuge, saying ‘I am yours,’ I give safety from all beings,” and the sentence that follows it, “be he Vibhishana or Ravana himself.” Vibhishana comes down out of the sky and falls at Rama’s feet: “I have given up Lanka, my friends, and my wealth; my kingdom, my life, and my happiness are now centered in you.” Rama asks him for the strength and the weakness of the rakshasas, and he gives away every name he grew up with. Rama swears by his three brothers that he will kill Ravana and “make you king of Lanka,” and in the same hour Lakshmana brings water from the sea and anoints him king of the rakshasas in the midst of the monkey chiefs, with Lanka still on the far side of the water. His first counsel as their ally is that water: “Let king Raghava seek the refuge of the sea. This immeasurable ocean was dug out by King Sagara.”

Against His Own House

In the war he is Rama’s eyes. In sarga 61 a mountain of a rakshasa comes striding across the air and Rama asks who it is; “That is Kumbhakarna, the son of the sage Vishrava, and his fire is very great,” Vibhishana answers, and gives the counsel that steadies the monkeys. In sarga 86, when Rama is too deep in grief to hear him, he says it again: “Ravana‘s son Indrajit has gone to Nikumbhila.” “Let Lakshmana go against him with a large army and kill him there.” Brahma’s boon, he explains, holds one door open: “The enemy who draws his bow against you while you are still on your way, before you have reached the foot of the banyan called Nikumbhila and before you have propitiated the fire, that enemy will be the cause of your death.” In sarga 87 he shows Lakshmana the banyan, and Indrajit’s eyes go past Lakshmana to the uncle beside him. “You are my father’s own brother. You are my uncle, and I am your brother’s son. How can you hold enmity against your own nephew, rakshasa?” “You have turned every virtue upside down.” Vibhishana lets him finish. “I was born into a race of rakshasas whose deeds are cruel, that is true, and my nature is goodness, the first of the virtues human beings can have. It is my own, and it is no rakshasa’s nature.” “For those vices I abandoned my brother, your father. Now hear what follows from it. This city of Lanka will not stand, and you will not, and neither will your father.” In sarga 101 he springs forward and kills Ravana’s horses with his mace, and Ravana hurls a blazing javelin at him; Lakshmana steps between them, and the javelin that Maya once gave Ravana leaves the rakshasa it was meant for and goes into Lakshmana’s chest.

Over His Brother’s Body

In sarga 109 Ravana lies on the field, and Vibhishana “was swept away by grief and began to lament.” “Famous hero, valiant, skilled in statecraft, your long arms still ringed with armlets now lie still, and your crown, bright as the sun, is knocked to the ground.” “The very fate I foretold has fallen on you, because in your bondage to desire and delusion you would not take my counsel.” Rama tells him that a warrior who falls in the field is not to be mourned, and then Vibhishana speaks for the brother he has lost: “He gave to every beggar who came to him, he enjoyed his pleasures, he kept his dependents, he showered his friends with riches and paid his enemies back in full. He tended the sacred fire without a break, practiced great austerities, mastered the Vedas and knew every rite.” And in sarga 111, when Rama tells him to perform the last rites, the same Vibhishana refuses: “He gave up the vows of dharma, he was cruel, merciless, false, and a violator of others’ wives; I do not think it right to give this brother, who was truly an enemy wearing a brother’s face, his funeral rites.” Rama answers, “Animosity ends only with death,” “he is as much mine now as he is yours,” and Vibhishana makes ready the funeral of his slain brother: the three sacred fires carried out of Lanka, the rites with old Malyavan at his side, and “the man who had refused to do this an hour ago did it with his own hand.” In sarga 112 Rama tells Lakshmana, “This Vibhishana is bound to me by love and devotion, gentle brother, and he did us good service before we ever needed it,” and in the full assembly of Lanka the rakshasas and the monkeys pour water over him from the same jars. It is his hands that bring Sita on a palanquin to Rama, and Rama says before the whole army, “the labor of Vibhishana too has borne fruit, who left a brother without virtue and came of himself to take shelter with me.” Rama tells him to stay in Lanka, and he goes to Ayodhya anyway and holds the white fly-whisk at the coronation. At the end of the Uttara Kanda, when everyone is ready to follow Rama into the Sarayu, Rama holds him back: “So long as the sun and the moon endure, so long as this earth abides, and so long as my story lives in the world, so long let your kingdom stand. In friendship I lay this on you; carry it out. Guard your people in dharma, and make no reply to this.” “So shall it be,” Vibhishana says.

His Path

The Death of Indrajit, and Ravana Takes the Field · The banyan at Nikumbhila an uncle points out, a nephew’s “you have turned every virtue upside down,” and a brother’s javelin that Lakshmana takes.

The Ordeal of Fire, the Return, and the Coronation · Sea water poured in the assembly of the rakshasas, Sita brought on a palanquin, and a second fly-whisk held in Ayodhya.

The Departure of Rama to His Own Abode · A friend standing before Rama on the way to the Sarayu, and an order that was to have no reply.

The Mind That Held in Trouble

Read whole, Valmiki’s Vibhishana asked Brahma for one thing, and the poem tests him on that one thing over and over. His brothers asked for deathlessness and for sleep; he asked that his mind stay steady in dharma in the worst of difficulties, and the poem sets him again and again in exactly the difficulty where dharma and family face each other across a room. It lets the charge of betrayal be spoken at full length: in Sugriva’s mouth on the shore, in Indrajit’s under the banyan, and in Ravana‘s own, “stain of our line.” It gives him no argument in reply. It gives the reply to Rama, who names his own brothers and says that not all of them are Bharata. Vibhishana’s own words are few: give Sita back, do not kill the envoy, this is the tree, I will not burn this man; and the last time, at Rama’s word, he does the thing he refused. The kingdom he was given he never asked for; Rama gave it on the near side of the sea, before the war, and on the day of his own going made it last as long as his own story. To this man born among rakshasas the poem gives, at the end, the same standing it gives Hanuman: stay, as long as the story is told.