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On the northern shore of the sea, where the army of monkeys and bears lay camped for miles, a spy of the demon king Ravana came prowling in. His name was Shardula, and he was a warrior of real strength. He looked out over that immense host, guarded on every side by Sugriva, and finding it fearless and unshaken, he turned back. Racing into Lanka, he told King Ravana that a flood of monkeys and bears, deep and past all measuring like a second ocean, was rolling toward the city.
Shardula’s warning, and the sending of Shuka
Shardula went on. Those two sons of Dasharatha, Rama and Lakshmana, superbly made and among the finest of fighters, had traced Sita and come all the way to the sea. They had pitched their camp at the water’s edge, he said, and the army spread across close to ten yojanas of ground in every direction. Learn the truth of it quickly, he urged the king; your own spies can find out everything at once, and then, as you judge fit, you may reach for one of the old expedients, a gift to win them over, soft words to talk them around, or a wedge driven in to split the enemy from within.
Shardula’s words threw Ravana into sudden agitation. Once he had settled on his course, he called for a demon named Shuka, a master among those who knew the ways of duty, and told him to go at once to the monkey king Sugriva and speak, boldly and without a stumble, in a gentle and polished voice, exactly the message the king now laid on him.
A key to the reading (the yojana): The Gita Press translation reckons one yojana at roughly eight miles. An army spread across ten yojanas means a camp stretched over some eighty miles, about a hundred and thirty kilometers. The bridge built later in this chapter is put at a hundred yojanas long, roughly eight hundred miles.
The message ran like this. Monkey king, you were born into a line of great kings, you are mighty, you are the son of Riksharajas. Nothing I have ever done has helped you or harmed you, and even so you are as good as a brother to me. Tell me, Sugriva, if I did carry off the wife of that clever prince, how does that touch you? Go home to Kishkindha. Lanka can never be taken by monkeys, not by any means at all. The gods themselves with all their gandharvas cannot take it, so what are men and monkeys to think of it?
With that, Shuka took the shape of a bird and shot up into the sky. He flew a long way out over the sea and hung there in the air, and from that height he began to recite the message to Sugriva. Word for word he gave what the wicked Ravana had ordered, and word for word, as he spoke, the monkeys sprang up and began to tear at his feathers and pound him with their fists. They caught the night-ranging demon and bore him down by main force.
A sub-tale: The name Riksharajas comes here from Ravana’s own mouth. In Valmiki’s telling, Sugriva and Vali are called the sons of Riksharajas. Ravana leans on that kinship to try to pry Sugriva loose from Rama, and this is exactly the wedge, the policy of division, that Shardula had recommended.
Once they had dragged him down out of the sky to the ground, and while the monkeys were still mauling him, Shuka spoke. Kakutstha, he said to Rama, kings do not kill envoys; call your monkeys off. The only envoy who deserves death is the one who drops his master’s message and starts declaring views of his own. Hearing that plaintive appeal, Rama told the monkeys who were beating him not to kill him.
Given his safety, Shuka spread his wings and rose again into the air, and spoke once more. Sugriva, he said, you are full of spirit, mighty and bold; hear now what Ravana, who makes the whole world weep, has sent me to say to you. And the monkey lord Sugriva, high of heart, gave the demon’s spy a clean, unflinching answer.
Carry this back to Ravana, Sugriva said. You are no friend of mine, no object of my pity, no benefactor of mine, nothing I hold dear. You are Rama’s enemy, and for that you deserve death along with all your kin, as Vali did, demon fit only to be killed. I will come with a great army, with my sons and my kinsmen and my whole clan, and burn you and the whole of Lanka to ash.
The gist: With Shardula’s news of the army in hand, Ravana turned to the policy of division and sent Shuka to Sugriva, hoping to peel him away from Rama. Shuka took a bird’s shape and began to deliver the message, and the monkeys seized him; at Rama’s word he was spared. Sugriva sent back a hard answer, that Ravana was Rama’s enemy and would perish with his whole line.
Angada’s counsel, and the release of Shuka
Then Angada, Vali’s son and among the best of the monkeys, spoke up. This is no envoy, my lord, he said; to me he looks like a spy. Standing right here he has taken the measure of our whole army. Seize him, then, and do not let him return to Lanka; that is what seems right to me. At the command the monkeys sprang and bound the demon, who was wailing all the while like some helpless, abandoned thing.
Tormented past bearing by those furious monkeys, Shuka cried out at the top of his voice to the great-souled Rama, son of Dasharatha. My wings are being ripped away, he screamed, and my two eyes are being put out. From the night I was born to the night I am to die, whatever wrong I have ever done, if I lose my life here in this moment, every last one of those sins will come to rest on your head. Rama, hearing the wail, would not let him be killed. Set him free, he told the monkeys; he came to us as an envoy.
The answer Sugriva had sent back to Ravana had run on well past that first defiance. If you were truly so strong, it asked, why did you kill Jatayu, king of the vultures, an old bird bowed down with age? How did you find the nerve to carry off wide-eyed Sita in the very presence of Rama and Lakshmana? And now that you hold her, why can you not see the disaster bearing down on you? You do not know Rama, that mighty and great-souled prince of the house of Raghu, hard for the gods themselves to withstand, the man who will take your life.
It went further still. You fool, Ravana, even with Indra and all the gods to shield you, you will not escape Rama. Slip out of sight by some conjuror’s trick and climb the sun’s road across the sky, or dive down into Patala, or fold yourself at the lotus feet of Shiva, lord of Kailasa, and even then you will be killed by Rama, you and your younger brother Kumbhakarna with you. In all three worlds I can see no pishacha, no rakshasa, no gandharva, no asura with the power to keep you safe.
A key to the reading (the three worlds): Valmiki returns again and again to the three worlds, meaning bhuh (the earth), bhuvah (the middle air), and svah (heaven). The sun’s road stands for the vault of the sky, and Patala for the lowest of the nether regions. The point of the taunt is plain: for Ravana there is nowhere left to hide.
At Rama’s word the monkeys let the envoy go free at last, since Rama, moved by that piteous cry, had refused from the first to let him be killed.
The gist: Angada judged Shuka a spy rather than an envoy, since he had gauged the army, and asked that he be bound. In his pain Shuka called on Rama, warning that the sins of his whole life, from birth to death, would fall on Rama’s head. Rama, treating him as an envoy, had him released. Woven through the exchange was the reminder that the killing of Jatayu and the theft of Sita had made Ravana’s ruin certain.
Rama’s vigil at the sea, and his wrath
After this Rama, prince of Raghu’s house, spread blades of kusha, the sacred sharp-edged grass, on the seashore, folded his palms, turned to face the east, made his prayer to the great ocean, and lay down. For a pillow the destroyer of his enemies used his own right arm, which had the look of a coiled serpent and had in earlier days been dressed in ornaments of gold.
It was a huge arm, thick as a mace. It had given away thousands of cows in gift. At the times of anointing and bathing it had been kneaded again and again by the hands of noble women full of a mother’s tenderness. It had worn armlets of gems and gold and the finest ornaments of pearl. It had been perfumed with sandal and aloe and with saffron pastes that carried the glow of the rising sun. On the marriage couch, on its white sheet, that same arm had once been graced by Sita’s resting head, and lying there it looked like the coils of Takshaka, a serpent whose body is painted a deep red, laid upon the clear water of the Ganga. That arm had deepened the grief of his enemies on the field of battle and brought joy to his friends. It was long as an ox’s yoke, and it was the support of the whole earth out to its four surrounding seas. Its skin had been worn hard by the lash of the bowstring as it drove arrow after arrow to the left.
Having resolved that this day either the sea would be crossed or the god of the sea would die, the mighty-armed Rama lay down beside the water with his body and speech and mind held still, disciplined and exact as a sage under vow. Three whole nights passed while he lay there on the kusha-strewn ground, never once slack in his observance. Skilled in policy and devoted to what was right, Rama fasted through those three nights and waited on the sea, the lord of rivers.
Still the sluggish sea gave Rama no sight of itself. He had done everything worship called for, and even so the ocean would not show itself in any personal form. Then Rama, angry now at the sea, the outer corners of his eyes gone red, turned to Lakshmana, who stood nearby marked with every fortunate sign, and spoke.
A key to the reading (the simile of Takshaka): Valmiki likens Rama’s arm to the coil of the serpent Takshaka laid on a white sheet. The image carries more than beauty; the strength of the arm, its gravity, and its splendor are all bound together in it. The purity of the Ganga’s water and the purity of the white sheet are set side by side, each the measure of the other.
The scorn of patience, and the rain of arrows
Look at the vanity of this sea, Rama said, that it will not come forward and show itself. Calm, patience, plain dealing, and a soft answer, the virtues of good people, are wasted on those who have none of them, and read there only as weakness. The world does its honors to the man who praises himself, who is vicious and brazen, who struts about advertising his own name and lays the rod on everyone in his path. In this world, Lakshmana, a policy of gentleness wins no fame, no honor, and no victory on the field.
Watch, Rama went on. Today with my arrows I will pen in on every side the whole body of water in this makaralaya, this home of the alligators. The bodies of its serpents split by my shafts, the great hulks of its fish, and the trunks of its elephantine sea beasts I will cut into pieces. With its conches and its oyster shells, its fish and its alligators, I will dry this makaralaya out today by open war.
The sea takes my patience for weakness, Rama said. A plague on patience shown to a creature like this. Bring me my bow, Sumitra’s son, and arrows like venomous snakes; I will dry the sea now, so the monkeys can walk across to Lanka on foot. In my anger today I will throw into turmoil even this sea that is past troubling, this sea that for all its thousands of surging waves still keeps within the limits of its own shores; today by open war I will dry it out. With my arrows I will strip this varunalaya, this house of Varuna the water god, of its boundaries, and set into churning confusion this great deep so crowded with its mighty demons.
A sub-tale: Valmiki keeps many names for the sea: makaralaya, the home of the alligators; varunalaya, the house of Varuna; and saritam pati, the lord of the rivers. Each name opens a different view of it, now the dwelling of water creatures, now the domain of a god, now the last destination of every river.
So saying, his bow in his hand and his eyes stretched wide with fury, Rama blazed like the fire at the end of the world, and became something no enemy could face. He bent his terrible bow at one end, drew the string gently up, and with a twang that shook the world he loosed arrows keen as Indra’s thunderbolts. Flaming with their own heat and driven at tremendous speed, those splendid shafts drove deep into the water of the sea and threw the serpents into terror.
That great surge of the sea’s water, fish and alligators and all, grew hideous, and the roar of the wind rose with it. All at once the sea was covered with ranks of towering waves, littered with conches and shells, wrapped in the smoke that rose where the arrows entered, and the waves began to play upon it. Serpents with blazing mouths and burning eyes, and the great and mighty danavas who live in the depths of Patala, writhed in their distress. Waves as high as the Vindhya and the Mandara mountains rose in their thousands, and the alligators rose with them.
With its whirling masses of water, its huge sea beasts flung upward, its frightened serpents and demons, the varunalaya roared aloud. And in the sky, unseen, the brahmarshis and the devarshis raised their own cry, a high wail of alas and a shout of hold, hold.
At that very moment Lakshmana, Sumitra’s son, sprang forward and caught hold of the immeasurable bow that Rama, in his blazing eagerness, was drawing yet again, his breath coming fast with anger. No more, he said, no more. Even without this your work across the sea will be done today, best of heroes. Men like you do not fall under the sway of anger. So think of some other way across, one that will last and that becomes a good man.
A key to the reading (maryada): Rama threatens to strip the sea of its maryada, its boundary. Here maryada means the fixed line of the shore, within which the sea stays hemmed for all its thousands of waves. His fury is saying that he will break that law of nature itself if the sea will not give him a road.
The gist: Even after three nights of worship the sea would not show itself, and Rama in his anger resolved to dry it up. Scorning the way of patience, he loosed arrows like Indra’s thunderbolts, and the sea, its creatures, its serpents, and its demons were all thrown into anguish. At the cry of the seers in the sky and Lakshmana’s restraining hand, Rama held back.
The sea-god appears, and the boon of Marukantara
Even when Lakshmana spoke, Rama did not give ground before the heaving sea; the destroyer of his enemies stood unmoved before the arrogant lord of rivers. Then the sea-god himself rose up out of the middle of the sea, the way the sun climbs from behind the great eastern mountain, that offshoot of Meru where the sunrise is fixed. He came shining like a smooth cat’s-eye gem, decked with jewels set in gold, in the company of serpents with blazing hoods.
He wore a garland of red flowers and robes of red; his eyes were like the petals of a lotus; on his head he bore a heavenly wreath of every kind of blossom. Adorned with ornaments of pure and refined gold and with the finest jewels of gems born from his own domain, he looked like the Himalaya itself dressed in all its many minerals.
On his broad chest, hung in the middle of a single string of pearls, a bright, restless jewel of white luster stood out, a very brother to the Kaustubha gem that rides on the chest of Vishnu. Masses of waves rose and fell at his side; clouds and winds hemmed him in; and around him on every side pressed the presiding goddesses of the chief rivers, Ganga and Sindhu among them, each wearing some lovely shape of her own. Amid the heaving sea beasts and the startled serpents and demons, the mighty sea-god came near, and addressing Rama first, his palms joined, he spoke these words to the prince of Raghu’s house who stood there with an arrow in his hand.
Gentle prince of Raghu, the sea-god said, earth, air, ether, water, and fire hold each to its own nature and keep to the eternal law that governs it. My nature too is this, that I am fathomless and cannot be swum across. To become fordable would be a violation of what I am. Even so, I will tell you the way to cross me.
Not out of desire, said the sea-god, not out of greed, not out of fear, can I in any way hold back these waters of mine, teeming with alligators and sea creatures. Yet for you I will make an arrangement, so that you can cross over. Until your army has reached the far shore, I will see to it that the alligators do not attack. And I will so contrive it, Rama, that as the monkeys cross, their feet find footing firm as solid ground.
Then Rama said to him, hear me, varunalaya. This great arrow of mine cannot be recalled and cannot be wasted; on what stretch of country shall it fall? Hearing Rama’s words and seeing that mighty shaft, the sea-god of great splendor answered: to my north there is a most holy region called Drumakulya, a place as famous in the world as you are.
In that country, the sea-god went on, live many bandits of savage look and savage deeds, chief among them the Abhiras by caste, and these sinners drink my water. I cannot bear the taint of their touch upon me. Let your fine arrow fall there, then, Rama, and let it not be spent in vain.
Hearing the words of the great-souled sea, Rama loosed that blazing, splendid arrow toward the very quarter the ocean wished. Where it came down, that shaft with the glare of the thunderbolt and the lightning, the country took from it the name Marukantara, by which it has been known on earth ever since (it is reckoned to lie roughly across the modern Marwar and Bikaner country of Rajasthan). The earth, pierced by the arrow’s head, shrieked aloud in that moment, and from the mouth of the cleft the water of Rasatala, one of the nether regions, came bursting up.
That cleft is now a well, and it took the name Vrana, the wound. The water that rises from it without stopping is seen even today to be as salt as the water of the sea. A dreadful sound went up from the tearing of the earth; and by that sound, by the fall of the arrow, Rama dried the water out of the hollows of the ground. From that time the region has been known through all three worlds as Marukantara. Having dried that hollow, the learned son of Dasharatha, whose valor matched the gods’, gave the desert land a boon.
Rama granted that this land would be good for cattle, light in disease, full on every side with fruit and roots and honey, rich in ghee and milk, thick with herbs of every kind and with sweet scent. By Rama’s boon the desert, gifted with those virtues, became a country to delight in.
A key to the reading (Marukantara, the modern equivalent): The Gita Press translation ties Marukantara, or Marujangala, to roughly the Marwar and Bikaner country of today’s Rajasthan. Here Rama’s unfailing arrow came down, the water dried away, and a moment that might have been a curse turned into a boon; that same desert grew rich in cattle, herbs, and sweet scent. This is Valmiki’s habit of binding geography and story tightly together.
The gist: The sea-god appeared in divine form, attended by the river-goddesses and dressed in jewels. He explained that his own fathomless nature bound his hands, proposed the bridge as the way across, and promised to hold the alligators off until the army had crossed. He had Rama’s unfailing arrow sent north to the Drumakulya country, and out of that came Marukantara; Rama blessed the desert land with plenty.
Nala named, and the bridge begun
With that hollow dried, the sea, lord of rivers, spoke to Rama, who knew all the scriptures. Gentle prince, he said, here stands Nala, the splendid son of Vishvakarma, the architect of the gods; his father granted him skill in every craft, and he loves you, maker of this world. Let this monkey, so full of eager strength, build a bridge upon me, and I will hold it up. He is as fine a builder as his father before him.
Having said this, the sea-god vanished. Then Nala, best of the monkeys, sprang to his feet and said to the mighty Rama: I am Vishvakarma’s own son, sprung from his body, and I am his equal in the craft. All this the sea has just reminded me of; he has spoken the plain truth. I do not, unasked, go about announcing my own gifts.
With my father’s power at my command, Nala said, I can throw a bridge across this wide makaralaya; the sea spoke rightly. To my mother, on Mount Mandara, Vishvakarma once gave this boon: a son the very equal of myself shall be born to you, lady, through me. And my own view is this, that toward the ungrateful the one right course a man has in this world is punishment; a plague on patience, on soft words, on gifts, when they are spent on such people.
This fearful sea, Nala went on, which your ancestor Sagara had dug out and widened, has bent to give Rama a road only because it fears his punishment, with a wish to watch the bridge rise mixed into that fear. And I too, varunalaya, am certainly able to build a bridge upon the sea. So let the best of the monkeys begin gathering the bridge’s materials this very day.
Then, at Rama’s sending, hundreds of thousands of the finest monkeys leapt up in delight across the great forest all around. Huge as mountains, they tore up trees and boulders there and dragged them down toward the sea.
A sub-tale: The name Sagara comes here from Nala’s mouth. Rama’s ancestor Sagara had sixty thousand sons, and it was their digging of the earth that is said to have widened the sea, which is why the sea carries the name sagara. So Nala can say that the sea is in debt to Rama’s own line, and even so it bent only under the fear of punishment.
The gist: The sea named Nala, son of Vishvakarma, as the bridge’s builder, and then vanished. Nala gave his own account, spoke of the craft he held by his father’s boon, and argued that punishment alone suits the ungrateful. At Rama’s order, hundreds of thousands of monkeys spread through the forest and began hauling trees and stone.
A hundred yojanas of bridge in five days
The monkeys filled the sea with sal and ashvakarna, with dhava and bamboo, with kutaja, arjuna, palmyra, tilaka, tinisha, bilva, and saptaparna, with karnikara trees in flower, and with mango and ashoka. Some trees they lifted with the roots still on and some without, and raising them high like the tall banners set up in Indra’s honor, they flung them into the sea. From every side they carried in palmyra, pomegranate bushes, coconut, vibhitaka, karira, bakula, and nimba.
The mighty, huge-bodied monkeys tore up rocks and hills as big as elephants and hauled them to the shore with engines and levers. When the rocks were dropped in all at once, the water leapt up to the sky and came falling back. Some of the monkeys held measuring rods to gauge the bridge’s length and breadth; others drew cords taut, laying out a straight line a hundred yojanas long. Nala raised that vast, great bridge down the middle of the sea, the lord of rivers, and with the help of other monkeys of fierce labor the bridge went up course by course.
A key to the reading (the day-by-day measure): The Gita Press translation counts each day’s work in yojanas. On the first day 14 yojanas (about 112 miles), on the second 20 yojanas (about 160 miles), on the third 21 yojanas (about 168 miles), on the fourth 22 yojanas (about 176 miles), and on the fifth 23 yojanas (about 184 miles) as far as Mount Suvela. In all, a bridge a hundred yojanas long and ten yojanas wide.
On the first day the monkeys built fourteen yojanas of the bridge, thrown up by those quick-handed, elephant-like, delighted workers. On the second day, monkeys of fearsome build and great strength ran up twenty more just as fast. On the third day, swift and huge of body, they laid twenty-one yojanas of bridge across the sea. On the fourth day, moving with great force and in a fever of haste, they finished a further twenty-two. And on the fifth, working feverishly, the monkeys built twenty-three more and carried the bridge all the way to Mount Suvela on the far shore.
So it was that Nala, best of the monkeys, the splendid and powerful son of Vishvakarma, bridged the sea; he proved as skilled in the craft as his father before him. Nala’s bridge, beautiful and brilliant, lay across the makaralaya and shone like the Milky Way, the Svatipatha, drawn across the sky.
Then the gods with their gandharvas, the siddhas (beings born already possessed of magical powers), and the great seers came and stood in the sky, longing to see this marvel. Gods and gandharvas gazed at the Nala-bridge, ten yojanas broad and a hundred long, a thing no one else could have raised. The monkeys, leaping in long bounds and short and roaring aloud, looked on that bridge, past all imagining, past all bearing, wonderful and hair-raising; and every other creature too looked on this bridging of the sea. Even as they built it, those crores of monkeys of enormous strength were passing across to the far side of the great sea.
That vast bridge, well made, splendid, finely built, and firmly joined, lay upon the sea like the parting drawn through a woman’s hair. And on the far side of the sea Vibhishana took his stand with his ministers, mace in hand, ready to hold off any enemy who might try to break the bridge.
A key to the reading (the simile of the parting): Valmiki calls the bridge a simanta, the parting of a woman’s hair. On the blue spread of the sea the straight white line of the bridge looks just like the white line drawn through the hair. The image of the Milky Way, the Svatipatha, catches the same beauty, that long white line.
The army’s march, and the gods’ consecration
After this Sugriva said to Rama, whose valor never failed, that he should climb onto Hanuman’s back and let Lakshmana ride on Angada’s shoulders. This makaralaya is a very wide sea, brave prince, he said; these two, who can travel the sky, will carry you across. So Rama, bow in hand and set on what was right, went at the head of that army with Lakshmana and Sugriva. Some of the monkeys went down the middle and some along the flanks; some plunged into the water and swam, some pressed on along the bridge, and some sprang into the air and flew like Garuda.
The dreadful monkey army, crossing over, drowned even the rising roar of the sea under its own great clamor. By the Nala-bridge that host passed to the far side, and King Sugriva halted them on the far shore, a place well supplied with roots and fruit and water.
Seeing this marvel of Rama’s, a thing others could not have done, the gods with the siddhas, the charanas (singers who move through the sky), and the great seers came suddenly to Rama and consecrated him, each apart, with waters of high blessing. With all manner of auspicious words they did honor to Rama, whom kings themselves revere: conquer your enemies, O king, they said, and guard this earth with its seas for uncounted years.
The gist: In five days Nala bridged the sea, ten yojanas wide and a hundred long, and the gods gathered in the sky to watch the wonder. Vibhishana stood guard on the far shore. By Sugriva’s arrangement Rama rode on Hanuman and Lakshmana on Angada, and crores of monkeys crossed by bridge and water and air and settled on the far shore. The gods consecrated Rama and blessed him with victory and a long reign.
Source: Srimad Valmiki Ramayana, Yuddhakanda, Cantos 20-22 (Gita Press, Gorakhpur).
Based on: Valmiki Ramayana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)