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Back inside Lanka, seated on his high throne of gold, Ravana could still see Rama’s arrows. They floated in front of his eyes the way an afterimage will, each one like the fiery comet that rises at the end of an age, throwing off a light that would not hold steady, quick and shifting as lightning. His pride was broken, and the break sat in his chest like a stone. An elephant feels this when a lion has pinned it; a serpent feels it when Garuda comes down out of the sky. That was how the high-souled Rama had left him. For a long while the king let his gaze travel over the ogres around him, and then he spoke. All that austerity of the highest kind, he said, all those years of penance, had come to nothing. He, who stood equal to mighty Indra himself, had been beaten in the field by a man. And as he said it, the old warning of Brahma came back to him, the terrible sentence he had once been given: know that your danger will come from mortals. It was coming true in front of him.
The boon of deathlessness, and the one exception he forgot
Ravana opened the ledger of his own choices and read it plainly. When he had won his great boon, he had asked to be safe from death at the hands of gods, of demons, of gandharvas (the singers of heaven), of yakshas (a race of divine spirits), of ogres, and of serpents. It had never once occurred to him to ask for safety from men. Men had seemed beneath the asking. Now he understood who Rama was. This was the mortal that Anaranya, a king born in the line of Ikshvaku, had spoken of long ago when Ravana had cut him down: that from that house would come a man who would destroy Ravana on the field of battle together with his sons, his ministers, his army, his horses, and his charioteers, the vilest of ogres brought to ruin at last. And there was a second curse besides, laid on him by Vedavati, a woman he had violated in an older age.
Other warnings crowded back on him too, the ones bound up with Uma (the consort of Shiva), with Nandishvara (a monkey-faced attendant of Shiva who had once laughed off Ravana’s mockery), with Rambha (the celestial nymph), and with Punjikasthala (another famed nymph, a daughter of Varuna). Each of them had left a word behind, and words spoken by those who see what is coming do not turn out to be empty. And Vedavati, the woman he had outraged, had come back into the world as Sita, the daughter of Janaka. Understanding all of this, the king gave his orders. Let the ogres hold the gates. Let them climb the ramparts and keep watch on the enemy. And one command weighed heavier than the rest: let Kumbhakarna be fully roused, Kumbhakarna who had no equal for sheer depth of power, who could break the pride of gods and demons together, and who lay drowned in sleep under Brahma’s own curse.
The key to it (a matter of timing): Ravana explained the difficulty. Kumbhakarna sleeps for stretches of eight, nine, or ten months at a time, and this time, after they had taken counsel together, he had gone back down into sleep only recently. His term was not yet up. That was why waking him before his hour was such heavy, doubtful work for the ogres.
When they heard the king, the ogres set out for Kumbhakarna’s dwelling in a state close to panic, because to wake him out of season was no small thing. Flesh-eaters and blood-drinkers all, they gathered perfumes, garlands, and a mountain of food, and left at once.
The gist: Shaken by Rama’s arrows, his pride in pieces, Ravana watched Brahma’s warning come true, that his ruin would come from a mortal. Feeling the weight of his own deeds pressing on him, the curses of Anaranya and Vedavati, the theft of Sita, he reached for his last resort: to wake his colossal brother Kumbhakarna out of the deep sleep that held him.
A mountain waking from the great sleep
The cave was a full yojana across on every side, close to eight miles, a lovely underground hall paved with jewels and gold and breathing out the smell of flowers. But the moment the ogres stepped inside, the wind from Kumbhakarna’s nostrils pushed them back. Even beings of enormous strength were driven backward by the force of his breathing, and they had to force their way forward against it. When they finally reached him, they found the giant sprawled like a scattered mountain range, hissing in his sleep like a snake, his out-breath enough to turn a man over. His mouth was as wide as Patala, the lowest of the underworlds. His unrinsed mouth gave off the reek of fat and old blood. His diadem made him shine like the sun, the hair stood bristling all over his body, and gold armlets circled his arms.
They set a heap of slaughtered animals before him, a hill of them tall as Mount Meru, mounds of deer and buffalo and boar, pails of blood, meat of every kind. They rubbed his limbs with fine sandal-paste, draped him with heavenly garlands, worked sweet perfumes into his skin, burned incense, and sang his praises. They thundered like storm-clouds on every side, blew their conches, slapped their arms, roared like lions. The din knocked birds out of the sky. Kumbhakarna slept on.
So they took up their bhushundis (a kind of heavy mallet), their pestles and their maces. They pounded his chest with mountain peaks, with pestle and mace and mallet and bare fists. He did not stir, and the wind of his breathing would not let them keep their footing in front of him. Then heavier machinery came: clay drums, tabors, kettledrums, conches, and gongs; horses, camels, donkeys, and elephants were driven up his body with staffs and whips and goads; his limbs were battered with bundles of heavy logs, with mallet and pestle swung by every arm at full strength. All of Lanka, its hills and its woods with it, was filled with the noise. He did not wake.
The key to it (a sense of the numbers): Ten thousand ogres ringed him at once, and his sleep did not break. Then a thousand kettledrums were sounded together, beaten with sticks of polished gold, and that too was wasted. In the end a thousand elephants were run over his body, and only then did the giant register anything at all, and only as a faint touch.
When the giant, wrapped in the deep sleep of Brahma’s curse, would not wake for any of it, the ogres began to burn with anger. Some hammered the kettledrums, some shouted, some tore out his hair, some bit his ears, some poured hundreds of pails of water into them. He did not move. Mallets studded with nails were dropped on his head and his chest, and shataghnis (a kind of spiked mace) bound with cords were worked against him from every side, and still the colossus slept. It was only when a thousand elephants ran across his body that he felt the touch of them.
The instant his sleep broke, hunger woke with it and frightened him. He gave no thought at all to the peaks and trees still crashing down on him. Stretching out drowsily, he came to his feet all at once. He spread his arms, long as the coils of a cobra and hard as mountain crags, arms that had beaten down every rival, opened a mouth loathsome as the fire that burns beneath the sea, and yawned. His yawning mouth, cavernous as Patala, looked like the sun coming up over a peak of Mount Meru. His breath was the gale that pours off a mountain.
As he rose, Kumbhakarna looked like Kala, Time itself in the shape of Death, risen to swallow every living thing at the dissolution of the worlds. His two enormous eyes, blazing like fire and dazzling like lightning, seemed like a pair of great planets burning in the sky. The ogres spread the food before him, and he ate: the meat of boars and buffaloes, blood by the pail, pails of fat, and wine. When he was full, the ogres came up before him, bowed their heads low, and stood around him on every side.
The gist: Brahma’s curse had bound Kumbhakarna in a sleep like death, and ten thousand ogres, a thousand kettledrums, and a thousand elephants together could not lift him out of it. In the end his own hunger woke him, and the moment he rose his monstrous shape looked like the Death that ends an age.
The waking giant learns of the danger
His eyes heavy with sleep, his vision still clouded, Kumbhakarna looked around at the ogres and calmed them. Then, puzzled to have been woken so far out of season, he asked why they had gone to such trouble to rouse him. Was all well with the king? Was there some danger here? Surely, he said, no small trouble had come, or they would not have woken him in such haste. He was ready. Today he would tear the king’s fear up by the roots, though he had to split the Mahendra mountain to do it or put out fire itself. No one wakes a sleeper like me, he said, for a trifle, so tell me plainly the true reason you have called me back.
To Kumbhakarna, speaking on in his anger, Yupaksha, one of the king’s ministers, answered with his palms joined. Monkeys the size of mountains, he said, had laid siege to Lanka. A dreadful danger had risen from Rama, who was wild with grief over the theft of Sita. A single monkey had already burned this great city to the ground and had killed Prince Aksha along with his elephant and his followers. And Ravana himself, grandson of the sage Pulastya, a thorn in the side of the gods, had been let go in the field with nothing but the word Depart from Rama’s mouth. What the gods and daityas and danavas had never managed, Rama had done: the king had barely escaped with his life and had had to flee.
When Kumbhakarna heard that his elder brother had been beaten, his eyes began to roll. This very day, he told Yupaksha, he would conquer the whole monkey host and Raghava and Lakshmana in the field, and only then would he go to see Ravana. He gave his word: he would gorge the ogres on the flesh and blood of the monkeys, and would drink the blood of Rama and Lakshmana himself.
A sub-tale: Hearing this proud speech, Mahodara, foremost among the ogre warriors, checked him with joined palms. Kumbhakarna should first hear Ravana’s command, weigh the advantages and the risks of the course he meant to take, and only then go out to beat the enemy in the field. Kumbhakarna heard him out, and, ringed by the ogres, set off for Ravana’s palace.
The ogres hurried back to Ravana ahead of him. Kumbhakarna had woken, they said. Should he go straight to the field, or come first before the king? Ravana was glad. He wished to see his brother here, he said, and let him be received with all honor. The ogres returned and told Kumbhakarna that the king, a very bull among all the ogres, wished to see him, and that he should come and bring joy to his brother. Kumbhakarna said, Let it be so, and rose from his bed.
He washed his face, bathed, and, delighted and thirsty, called for a draught to build his strength. At Ravana’s order the ogres fetched wine and dishes of every kind at once. Kumbhakarna drank down two thousand pails of wine, and, a little wild with it, filled to the brim with energy and strength, made ready to move. The glow of his body lit the king’s highway like the sun as he went, ringed by the ogre army, toward Ravana’s palace. He came on furious as Death, shaking the earth under his tread, and out beyond the walls the waiting monkeys and their troop-commanders were seized with terror. Some ran to take shelter with Rama, some dropped where they stood in their distress, and some lay flat on the ground in fear.
The gist: Awake and roaring over his own strength, Kumbhakarna heard of his brother’s defeat and swore to kill Rama and Lakshmana. He drank his wine, set out along the highway to meet Ravana, and the mere sight of his colossal shape scattered the monkeys standing outside the city.
Vibhishana names him, and Rama sets his lines
Rama took up his bow and saw the giant coming, diademed, mountainous, striding through the air as Narayana once did in the form of Trivikrama, who measured the whole universe in three steps. The huge army of monkeys broke and fled again at full speed. Watching his own ranks stream away and the ogre grow larger as he came, Rama turned in astonishment to Vibhishana. Who was this, he asked, this hero crowned with a diadem, with tawny eyes, huge as a mountain, at the sight of whom every monkey ran? Was he ogre or demon? Rama had never in his life seen such a being.
The deeply wise Vibhishana answered. This was Kumbhakarna, the son of Vishrava, a warrior of tremendous fire, who had once beaten Yama and Indra themselves in battle. No other ogre came near him in size. It was he who had routed danavas, yakshas, serpents, ogres, gandharvas, vidyadharas (celestial artists of the air), and kinnaras (half-divine beings with human bodies and horse-heads) by the thousand. Other ogre lords owed their strength to boons; this one was fierce and mighty by his very nature. Pike in hand, his eyes hideous, Kumbhakarna was a being the gods themselves had failed to kill, because they took him for Death in person and did not dare.
A sub-tale: Vibhishana told the old story. As a newborn, still an infant, this great creature had been so tormented by hunger that he swallowed thousands of living beings. The terrified people fled to Indra, who struck the child with his sharp thunderbolt. Kumbhakarna reeled and roared, then tore a tusk out of Airavata’s mouth and drove it into Indra’s chest. The gods and the brahmarshis went to Brahma and told him of Kumbhakarna’s wickedness, how he devoured creatures and would empty the whole world if left unchecked. Brahma laid a curse on him: from that day on he would lie sunk in sleep like one already dead. When Ravana begged that a term be set for his sleeping and his waking, Brahma decreed that he would sleep for six months and be awake for a single day.
The monkeys had run, Vibhishana said, at nothing more than the sight of him. Let them be told, then, that this was only some tall engine of war, some machine, so that they would lose their fear. Rama saw the sense in it, and gave his order to Nila, the commander of the army: draw up all the troops in formation, take command of the gates and the highways and the causeways of Lanka, gather up peaks and trees and rocks, and let every monkey stand armed and alert. Nila passed the order to the host. Gavaksha, Sharabha, Hanuman, and Angada took up mountain peaks and moved to the gate. Fired with the will to win, the monkey heroes fell on the enemy standing outside the gates and struck at them with trees. Armed with trees and rocks, that fierce host looked like a vast and terrible bank of cloud pressed up against a mountain.
The gist: Vibhishana told Rama who the giant was, the son of Vishrava, who as an infant had devoured the world’s creatures and now slept six months at a stretch under Brahma’s curse. To break the monkeys’ fear he told them to pass the word that this was only a machine, and Rama set Nila to holding the gates.
Ravana’s plea and Kumbhakarna’s counsel
Heavy with sleep and drink, but full of enormous strength, Kumbhakarna came on along the splendid highway. From the houses flowers rained down on him. He saw the palace of Ravana, hung with a lattice of gold and shining like the sun, and passed inside as though the sun had gone into a bank of cloud, and there, far off on his throne, he saw his elder brother, the way Indra might behold Brahma seated. He came close and touched the feet of his brother, who sat troubled in the aerial car Pushpaka, and asked what service was wanted of him. Ravana sprang up, took him in his arms, and set him on a place of honor.
His eyes red with anger, Kumbhakarna asked why they had gone to such lengths to wake him, of whom the king was afraid, who was going to die here. Ravana answered with his own eyes rolling in his distress. A very long time had gone by while his brother slept, he said, and sunk in that deep sleep Kumbhakarna could not know the fear that Rama had raised in him. This Rama, the son of Dasharatha, together with Sugriva, had crossed the sea and was now cutting at their very roots. The groves and gardens of Lanka had turned into a single ocean of monkeys. The foremost ogres had already been killed. Ravana admitted plainly that he could see no way at all to bring down the monkeys, and that no one had ever conquered them before.
Ravana appealed to his brother’s love and to his strength. In the wars of gods and demons, he reminded him, Kumbhakarna had many times joined the losing side and had beaten both gods and demons together. Let him show that strength now, and tear the enemy army apart the way a hard autumn wind scatters the clouds of that season. Let him save this Lanka, in which only the old and the children were left, for his treasury was emptied and his whole store was spent.
Hearing his brother’s lament, Kumbhakarna laughed out loud, and spoke. The very ruin they had all foreseen at that earlier council, when Vibhishana and the other well-wishers pointed out the fault in his course, Ravana was now tasting for himself. The fruit of a wicked deed comes as fast as a doer of evil drops into hell. Then he laid out the heart of statecraft. A man drunk on his own power, who leaves the earlier tasks for later and does the later ones first, no longer knows right from wrong; deeds done with no regard for the proper time and place fail like an offering poured into a fire that has not been consecrated. A king should pursue dharma, artha (worldly gain), and kama (desire) each in its own season, should take counsel with his ministers, and should learn to recognize the false friends among his advisers who have been bought by the enemy. He reminded Ravana that the counsel Mandodari and Vibhishana had given him had been the counsel that would have saved them. And still, he said, do as you will.
At this Ravana knit his brows and spoke in anger. Was Kumbhakarna lecturing him now like a father, or like some revered teacher? What was done was done; the wise do not grieve over the past; let them consider only what was fitting now. He asked his brother to set right, with his own strength, the harm that had sprung from Ravana’s own misrule, if there was love in him, for a friend is the one who helps the man caught in trouble, and a kinsman is the one who comes to the aid of those who have gone astray.
Seeing his brother in such deep distress, Kumbhakarna spoke again, softly now, to steady him. Let him put down his grief and his rage and be himself again; while Kumbhakarna lived, Ravana should not carry such despair; the enemy on whose account he suffered, Kumbhakarna would destroy. It had been his duty as a brother, out of brotherly feeling, to speak the hard and useful word; but now he would show him the enemy cut down in the field. When Rama and Lakshmana fell, the monkey host would be seen streaming away, and he would bring back Rama’s head, so that Sita would grieve and the tears of the ogres who had lost their kin would be wiped away.
The gist: Ravana pleaded on his brother’s strength and love for the destruction of the enemy host. Kumbhakarna first read him a lesson on his misrule, on the wise counsel of Vibhishana and Mandodari that he had refused to hear, and then, as a brother, reassured him that he would destroy Rama.
The thunder of his vow
He would finish Rama with his bare hands alone, Kumbhakarna said, even if Rama had thunder-wielding Indra beside him; and if Raghava could withstand the force of his fists, then his hail of arrows would drink Rama’s blood. Let it be Indra, or Yama, or Agni the fire, or Vayu the wind, or Kubera, or Varuna, he would meet them all; the sight of his mountainous body and his sharpened pike would make even Purandara, Indra himself, tremble. He would send Rama to the world of Yama and give Ravana the deepest peace, and would eat the monkey chiefs alive. If it was fear of the moon, or of Indra, or of Brahma himself, he would drive it off the way the sun drives off the dark of night. He would quiet Yama, swallow the fire, throw down the sun with its constellations onto the earth, drink the ocean dry, grind the mountains to powder. Give him all three worlds for food, he said, and his belly would still not be full. Let Ravana drink his wine today and take his pleasure, for the moment Rama went to Yama’s world, Sita would be his brother’s for as long as he wished.
The gist: Steadying his brother, Kumbhakarna swore a terrible oath that he alone would make an end of Rama, Lakshmana, and the whole monkey army, and told Ravana to set his cares aside and enjoy himself.
Mahodara’s scheme to win without a battle
When Mahodara heard this from the colossal, mighty Kumbhakarna, he spoke up. Born in a noble line the giant might be, but he was rash and coarse of mind, and so he did not know the right thing to do in every case; the king, though, knew statecraft and its opposite well enough. Kumbhakarna erred, Mahodara said, in speaking of dharma, artha, and kama as if they stood apart, when action is the root of them all. And how would he, alone, conquer that Raghava who had already killed so many overpowering ogres at Janasthana? Those very ogres who had escaped Janasthana were sitting in the city to this day in fear. Rama was like a lion, hard to bear as Death himself; going out to him alone was not wise.
Then Mahodara turned to Ravana with a plan. Sita was already in the king’s hand; why the delay? He had a way to bring her under Ravana’s power. Let it be cried through the city by drumbeat that five of them, Dwijihva, Samhradi, Kumbhakarna, Vitardana, and Mahodara himself, had gone out to kill Rama. Then they would go and give battle in earnest; if they won, no other means would be needed. And if the enemy survived and they came back, they would return smeared with blood, their own bodies gashed with arrows carved with Rama’s name, and would say, We have devoured Raghava and Lakshmana. Then let Ravana grant them a boon. Let it be proclaimed through the city, from the back of an elephant, that Rama had been killed together with his army; let garlands and garments and unguents and wealth be handed out to the warriors, and let Ravana himself drink in his joy. And when the story had spread on every side, let Ravana go to Sita in private, console her, and tempt her with the promise of gold and grain and jewels. By this trick, believing her husband destroyed, worn down by despair and by a woman’s weakness, Sita would come at last under his power. By this policy, Mahodara said, without a battle at all, the king would beat his enemy and enjoy glory, dharma, prosperity, and fame for a long age to come, with his army left whole.
The gist: Calling Kumbhakarna’s lone sally reckless, Mahodara laid before Ravana a plan of deceit for winning Sita without a battle: to have Rama’s death falsely proclaimed and so break her spirit into submission.
Kumbhakarna marches out
Kumbhakarna cut Mahodara down with words and told his brother that this very day he would kill that evil Rama and lift the king’s dreadful fear from him; let Ravana be free of his enemy and be happy. Heroes, he said, do not thunder for nothing, like clouds with no rain in them; he would make his roar good in the field with the deed. To Mahodara he said that advice like his pleased only the cowardly, dull-witted kings who thought themselves wise and heard flattery all day long; it was the fair-spoken who were cowards in battle who wrecked every undertaking. Lanka had been reduced to the king alone, the treasury drained, the army ground away, and now he was going out into a great fight to set right their ruinous policy.
When Ravana heard the shrewd words of Kumbhakarna, he laughed and said that Mahodara was afraid of Rama and had no taste for war; none was Kumbhakarna’s equal in love or in strength; let him go, then, to kill the enemy and to win. Hearing it, the mighty Kumbhakarna rose in high spirits and made ready to fight. He caught up his sharp, enemy-killing pike, all of it iron and set with tempered gold, bright and heavy as Indra’s thunderbolt, a thing able to destroy gods, danavas, gandharvas, yakshas, and serpents. It was wound about with crimson garlands, it gave off flame of its own, and it was stained with the gore of his enemies.
He would go alone, Kumbhakarna said; let his army stay here; hungry and enraged, he would eat the monkeys today. Ravana told him to go ringed by troops carrying pikes and mallets, for the monkeys were huge, brave, and set of purpose, and would tear a lone or careless foe apart with their teeth. Rising from his throne, Ravana hung around his brother’s neck a gold chain set with gems, and put on him armlets, rings, choice jewels, a pearl necklace bright as the moon, fragrant heavenly garlands, and earrings. His ears were large, and, decked out in gold, Kumbhakarna shone like a fire well fed with offerings. With a broad dark-blue girdle at his waist he looked like Mount Mandara wrapped by the serpent Vasuki at the churning of the milk-ocean. Clad in a golden mail able to take the heaviest blows, bright as lightning, he shone like the western mountain circled by the clouds of evening. Pike in hand, decked in every ornament, he moved out like Narayana in the striding form of Trivikrama.
He embraced his brother, walked around him in respect, bowed his head, and set out. Ravana sent him off with fair blessings, with the blaring of conch and kettledrum, and with an army bearing the best of weapons. Behind him rolled the huge car-warriors on chariots that thundered like clouds, and on elephants and horses. Ogres came after on serpents, camels, donkeys, lions, elephants, antelopes, and birds. Under a rain of flowers, a parasol over his head, his sharp pike in his fist, drunk and wild, stirred to a frenzy by the smell of blood, that enemy of gods and demons went out in state. Foot-soldiers by the countless followed, bearing pikes, swords, axes, bhindipalas (small hand-thrown javelins), iron clubs, maces, mallets, palmyra trunks, and slings, their eyes coppery red, many vyamas tall (a vyama being the span of a man’s outstretched arms), dark as heaped collyrium. And then, taking on yet another terrible shape, Kumbhakarna pressed forward.
The key to it (the monstrous scale): As he drew the ogres up in formation, Kumbhakarna had now grown a hundred bow-lengths across and six hundred tall, his eyes like the wheels of a chariot, his body black as a charred hill. Laughing, he said he would burn up the monkey battalions the way a flame burns moths. The forest-roaming monkeys, he added, had done him no wrong; they were only the ornament of a city’s gardens. The real cause of the siege was Raghava, with Lakshmana beside him, and it was Rama he would kill first.
The moment he set out, dreadful omens rose on every side. Ashen clouds the color of donkeys showed with meteors and lightning; the earth shook with its seas and its forests; she-jackals howled with burning morsels in their mouths; birds wheeled in circles from right to left. As he walked, a vulture settled on his pike, his left eye twitched, his left arm shook, a screaming meteor fell blazing, the sun went dim, and the pleasant wind died away. Kumbhakarna gave no thought to these hair-raising portents and pressed on, driven forward by the sheer force of destiny. Stepping over the rampart with his feet alone, he saw before him the wonderful monkey host, dense as a bank of storm-cloud. At the sight of him the monkeys scattered to every quarter like clouds blown by the wind, and the cloud-dark Kumbhakarna roared for joy. At his roar, terrible as the thunder of the sky, monkeys fell to the ground like sal trees cut off at the root. Bearing a huge iron club and a pike, the great Kumbhakarna went out to destroy his enemies, like Kalarudra at the world’s end, rod in hand, with his servant-attendant beside him.
The gist: Rebuking Mahodara, decked in Ravana’s ornaments and sent off with his blessings, Kumbhakarna marched out with a vast ogre army. Ignoring the fearful omens, grown a hundred bow-lengths broad and six hundred tall, he stepped over the wall, and at his first roar the monkey host scattered.
Angada’s steadiness and the monkeys’ return to battle
Making the sea ring, setting the mountains trembling, drowning the thunder itself, Kumbhakarna came out of the city at speed. He could not be killed by Indra or Yama or Varuna, and at the sight of that ogre with his terrible eyes coming on, the monkeys turned and ran. Watching them run, Prince Angada called out to Nala, Nila, Gavaksha, and the mighty Kumuda. Where were they going, he asked, forgetting their own great deeds and their high birth, running scared like common monkeys? Let them come back. Why guard their lives so dearly? This ogre was only a great and frightening figure, and they had the strength to fight it. By their courage they would blow this bugbear away.
With difficulty the monkeys found their nerve, gathered again from here and there, and came back to the field with trees. Wild as elephants in rut, they showered mountain peaks, rocks, and flowering trees on Kumbhakarna, and he did not so much as sway; the rocks that struck him shattered, the trees broke and fell. Fierce and quick, Kumbhakarna churned the ranks of the shining monkeys the way a forest fire churns a wood. Many of their best fell drenched in blood, cut down like trees in coppery bloom.
The fleeing monkeys looked neither ahead nor behind. Some dropped into the sea, some hung in the air, some hid in caves, some climbed the mountains, and some lay like the dead. They fled back by the very road they had crossed the sea on. Seeing them broken, Angada spoke again: let them halt and fight; for the routed there was no refuge to be seen on all the earth. If beings whose speed and manhood knew no bar threw down their weapons and ran, their own wives would spit their names; a life like that was death itself. Born in wide and noble houses, where were they running like common monkeys? Where had gone the boasts of valor they had made in the assembly? Of the coward it is said that there is no gain in living once you are despised. Let them take the road of good men and let their fear go. If they were killed they would win Brahmaloka, the world so hard for bad warriors to reach; if they killed the enemy they would win glory; and if they fled and lived, their good name would be gone.
A sub-tale: Even after Angada reasoned with them, the fleeing monkeys gave the answer that brave men count shameful: Kumbhakarna has made a terrible slaughter of us, this is no time to stand, our lives are dear to us. Saying it, they saw the fearful-eyed ogre coming again and scattered once more. Then the shrewd Angada, son of Vali, brought them back with soothing words and with arguments for Rama’s invincibility. Their spirits lifted, and the troop-leaders stood again, waiting for the order.
Rishabha, Sharabha, Mainda, Dhumra, Nila, Kumuda, Sushena, Gavaksha, Rambha, and Tara, with Dwivida, Panasa, and Hanuman at the front, the monkey chiefs advanced toward the battlefield with quick steps.
The gist: As the monkeys fled Kumbhakarna’s slaughter, Angada turned them back again and again, reminding them of courage and of the duty owed to glory. Steadied by his words and his reasons, the monkey chiefs made ready once more and moved toward the field.
Kumbhakarna’s terrible work on the field
Steadied by Angada’s words, the huge monkeys came back longing for the fight; resolved to give up their lives, they threw themselves into a savage battle. Lifting trees and mountain peaks, they fell on Kumbhakarna. In his fury he swung his mace and struck the enemy on every side, and at the blow eight thousand seven hundred monkeys lay scattered on the ground. Gathering sixteen, eight, ten, twenty, thirty of them at once into his arms, he ran on eating them the way Garuda eats serpents.
The monkeys steadied themselves once more and held the field with trees and rocks in hand. Dwivida tore up a boulder and hurled it at Kumbhakarna, but it fell short of him and came down on the ogre’s own army, crushing horses, elephants, chariots, and lordly tuskers; a second rock ground more ogres into the earth. The field ran wet with the blood of ogres. Their car-warriors, with arrows deadly as the shafts of Kala at the world’s end, began to sever the heads of the roaring monkey chiefs. The monkeys tore up trees in turn and destroyed chariots, horses, elephants, camels, and ogres.
Hanuman held himself in the air and rained peaks, rocks, and trees down on Kumbhakarna’s head, and the ogre split them all with his pike. Then Hanuman, in his anger, struck him with a mountain peak, and Kumbhakarna staggered, spattered with fat and blood. At that the ogre swung his pike, bright as lightning, like a mountain crowned with blazing fire, and drove it into Hanuman’s chest, between the arms, the way Kartikeya once struck the Krauncha mountain with his lance. His chest torn open by the pike, Hanuman brought up blood, and gave a terrible cry loud as the thunder of the clouds at the end of an age. Seeing him in pain, the ogres shouted for joy, and the frightened monkeys fled the field.
Then mighty Nila steadied the army and flung a peak at Kumbhakarna, but the ogre smashed it with his fist, and it dropped to the earth throwing off sparks and flames. Five tigers among the monkeys, Rishabha, Sharabha, Nila, Gavaksha, and Gandhamadana, rushed him and struck at him from every side with rocks, trees, palmyra trunks, feet, and fists. He felt their blows as no more than a soft touch and took no hurt at all. He caught Rishabha in his arms and crushed him until the terrible monkey fell bringing up blood from his mouth; he struck Sharabha with his fist, Nila with his knee, Gavaksha with a slap, and kicked Gandhamadana in his rage; and they all fell fainting, soaked in blood, like Kimshuka trees in red bloom cut down.
As these chiefs went down, monkeys by the thousand swarmed onto Kumbhakarna, climbing him as one climbs a mountain, striking with nails and teeth and fists and arms. Covered with thousands of them, the mountainous ogre looked like a mountain thick with trees. Then he gathered them all into his arms and began to eat them as Garuda eats serpents. The monkeys thrust into his mouth crawled back out through his nostrils and his ears. Mountainous, eating and crushing the monkeys, he moved through their ranks like the fire of dissolution, drenching the earth with flesh and blood. Pike in hand, he looked like thunder-armed Indra, or like Yama with his noose. As a fire burns a wood parched dry in summer, so he burned up the monkey host.
Struck down over and over, the monkeys in their distress ran to take shelter with Raghava. Seeing them broken, Angada, grandson of thunder-armed Indra through his father Vali, rushed at Kumbhakarna at speed. Lifting a mountain peak, roaring again and again, terrifying the ogres who followed at Kumbhakarna’s heels, Angada flung the peak at the giant’s head. Struck on the head, Kumbhakarna blazed up in a great rage and, past bearing it, sprang at Angada. He flung his pike at him, but the war-skilled Angada slipped it aside with a quick move. Then, leaping up, Angada struck him full on the chest with the flat of his hand, and the mountainous ogre fainted. Coming to, Kumbhakarna struck back with the back of his hand, and Angada dropped unconscious.
The gist: With mace, pike, and bare arms Kumbhakarna made a fearful slaughter of the monkeys, ranging the field like a forest fire and swallowing them by the thousand. Hanuman was wounded by a thrust of his pike, and Rishabha, Sharabha, Nila, Gavaksha, Gandhamadana, and even Angada were beaten senseless by his blows.
Sugriva taken, and Hanuman’s patience
The moment Angada dropped, Kumbhakarna caught up his pike and sprang at Sugriva. Seeing the mighty ogre come, the hero Sugriva leapt up, swung a mountain peak, and rushed him. Kumbhakarna braced every limb and stood facing the monkey king. Looking at Kumbhakarna, blood-smeared, devouring the great monkeys, Sugriva said that the ogre had felled heroes and eaten whole armies and won the highest glory; now let him leave the common host alone and take the blow of this one mountain that Sugriva would hurl.
Hearing that challenge, full of spirit and steadiness, Kumbhakarna answered that Sugriva was the grandson of Brahma and the son of Riksharaja, gifted with fortitude and courage, and that was why he roared. At this Sugriva drove the rock, hard as a thunderbolt, into the ogre’s chest, and it burst apart on that broad breast; the monkeys lost heart, the ogres roared for joy. Stung, Kumbhakarna opened his mouth in a roar and swung his lightning-bright pike to kill Sugriva. But Hanuman, son of the wind, sprang up, caught the sharp gold-shafted pike as it came from Kumbhakarna’s arm, gripped it in both hands, and broke that iron pike over his knee, a pike that weighed a thousand bharas (a bhara reckoned at some hundred and twenty-five kilograms).
When they saw the pike broken, the monkey host roared again and again and rushed in from every side; the ogre was dumbfounded, and Hanuman was praised on all lips. Then, in a fury, Kumbhakarna tore a peak off the Malaya mountain standing near Lanka and struck Sugriva with it, and the monkey king fell senseless on the field; the ogres roared for joy. Tucking the marvelous, terrible Sugriva under his arm, Kumbhakarna carried him off as a hard wind carries a cloud. Bearing Sugriva up, the giant looked like Mount Meru itself, high peak and all. With the valor of Indra in him, Kumbhakarna reckoned that once Sugriva was dead the whole monkey host, Raghava with it, would fall to pieces on its own.
Seeing the host scattered and Sugriva a prisoner, the wise Hanuman weighed what should be done. He thought of growing to the size of a mountain, killing the ogre, and freeing Sugriva. Then he considered that even if gods, demons, and serpents held Sugriva, the monkey king could still win his own release; that for the moment he was only stunned by the blow of the crag, and that in a little while, coming to himself, he would do what was best for himself and for the monkeys. He thought too that to free him by force would displease the high-souled Sugriva and injure his good name. So he would wait a while for the monkey king to show his own strength, and in the meantime steady the broken army. Thinking this, Hanuman set the host on its feet again.
Meanwhile Kumbhakarna, carrying the shaking Sugriva, passed into Lanka, where from the tops of the mansions, from the houses lining the road, and from the gate-towers the people were showering flowers on him. Sprinkled with fried grain and scented water, and cooled by the shade of the highway, Sugriva slowly came back to his senses. Held in the ogre’s arm, looking down the highway, Sugriva thought how, a prisoner like this, he might now take his revenge; he would do what served the monkeys. Deciding so, the monkey king suddenly raked the lower ends of Kumbhakarna’s ears off with his sharp nails, bit off his nose with his teeth, and tore open his sides with the nails of his feet.
Ears and nose torn away, his sides ripped, drenched in blood and choked with rage, Kumbhakarna spun Sugriva around and dashed him against the ground. Ground into the earth by that terrible strength, beaten by the enemies of the gods, Sugriva bounced up like a ball, sprang into the air, and shot back to Rama at speed. Robbed of his ears and nose, painted with blood, Kumbhakarna looked like a mountain with springs pouring down it. With Sugriva gone, and thinking to himself that he was now weaponless, the ogre caught up a fearful mallet, went out of the city again, and set to eating the monkey host like the swollen fire of the world’s end. Famished and greedy for flesh and blood, blind with rage, Kumbhakarna devoured ogres and monkeys, fiends and bears alike, as Death sweeps living things away at the end of an age.
The gist: Kumbhakarna knocked Sugriva senseless with a Malaya peak, tucked him under his arm, and carried him toward Lanka; rather than free him by force, Hanuman held the army together with patience. Coming to on the highway, Sugriva tore off the ogre’s ears and nose, ripped his sides, freed himself, and sprang back to Rama.
Lakshmana’s fight and Kumbhakarna’s pride
Just then Lakshmana, son of Sumitra, crusher of enemy armies and conqueror of enemy cities, took up the fight in anger. He drove seven arrows into Kumbhakarna’s body and sent more after them. Stung, the ogre cut Lakshmana’s arrows apart with his own, and Lakshmana grew angrier still. He covered Kumbhakarna’s bright golden mail with arrows the way the wind scatters an evening cloud, and the ogre, dark as heaped collyrium and hidden under gold-fletched shafts, shone like the sun screened behind clouds.
Then the terrible ogre spoke to Lakshmana with a touch of scorn, his voice like the thunder of massed clouds. Lakshmana had shown courage, he said, fighting fearlessly against one who could conquer Death itself in the field. To stand before him, weapon in hand, was itself a mark of honor, and to give him battle was more. Even Indra, mounted on Airavata and ringed by all the gods, had never once stood before Kumbhakarna. Though a mere youth, Lakshmana had pleased him with his valor, and so, taking leave of him, he now wished to go to Rama; it was Rama alone he wanted to kill, for the moment Rama fell the whole monkey host would be destroyed.
Hearing this proud speech, Lakshmana answered with a kind of laugh, grave words laced with praise. Your claim that you have grown past bearing for Indra and the gods is true, hero, it is no lie; today I have seen your prowess for myself. And here stands Rama, the son of Dasharatha, unmoving as a mountain. At that, Kumbhakarna paid Lakshmana no more mind, stepped past him, and, shaking the earth, sprang straight at Rama.
A sub-tale: Some texts add a further passage here. Mace in hand, Vibhishana rushed ahead of Rama, on Rama’s behalf, straight at his own brother Kumbhakarna. Seeing Vibhishana before him, Kumbhakarna told him to stand firm in the duty of a warrior and do what pleased Rama; by setting aside his love for a brother and taking Raghava’s shelter, Vibhishana had already fulfilled his purpose; he alone in the world of ogres was guarded by truth and dharma, and by Rama’s grace he would win the ogre kingdom. But let Vibhishana not stand before him, Kumbhakarna said, for battle-blinded and lost to rage he could no longer tell his own from strangers, though Vibhishana was one he wished to protect. Vibhishana answered that he had given the counsel that would have saved the line, and no one had heeded it, so he had come to Rama; what was done was done. Saying so, with tears in his eyes and his mace in his hand, Vibhishana drew off to one side and stood there thinking.
The gist: Lakshmana hemmed Kumbhakarna in with arrows, but the proud ogre dismissed him as a boy and said he sought only to kill Rama. Hearing Lakshmana’s cutting words, Kumbhakarna stepped past him and rushed straight at Rama.
Kumbhakarna’s end at Rama’s hands
Rama loosed the Raudra weapon, the missile presided over by Rudra, and buried its sharp arrows in Kumbhakarna’s chest. Hurt, the ogre sprang at him, and flames laced with embers shot from his mouth. Pierced by Rama’s arrows, roaring, driving the monkeys before him, that bull of ogres came on. The peacock-plumed arrows sank into his chest; the mace slipped from his hand and fell to the earth; all his weapons scattered. Even weaponless he made a terrible slaughter with his fists and his hands; pierced beyond counting, drenched in blood, he poured it out like a mountain streaming from its springs. Half-swooning with rage and with blood, he ran on eating monkeys and ogres and bears together.
Then he swung a fearful mountain peak and hurled it at Rama, but before it could reach him Rama split it with seven straight-flying arrows; his gold-etched shafts broke the Meru-like peak to pieces, and even as it fell it crushed two hundred monkeys. At that same moment the righteous Lakshmana, who had been turning over plan after plan for killing Kumbhakarna, said to Rama that the ogre could no longer tell his own from the enemy, monkey from ogre, and, maddened by the smell of blood, was eating all of them. Let all the best monkeys and the troop-leaders climb him from every side, so that, weighed down by that mass, this brute could not kill more of them. Gladdened, the monkeys climbed Kumbhakarna, but in his fury he shook them off as a wild elephant shakes off its driver.
Seeing them thrown off, and knowing the ogre was enraged, Rama took up his best bow and rushed at him at speed. His eyes red with fury, as though he would burn Kumbhakarna with a look, gladdening the troop-leaders whom the ogre’s strength had ground down, Rama sped at the giant. Serpent-like, its cord drawn taut, gold-inlaid and terrible, he carried the bow; steadying the monkeys, an excellent quiver bound at his back, he came forward. Ringed by the monkey host, with Lakshmana beside him, Rama advanced to close with Kumbhakarna. He saw the colossus, blood-smeared, his eyes red with rage, crowned with his diadem, furious as one of the elephants that guard the quarters of the sky, ringed by ogres, hunting for monkeys, huge as the Vindhya or the Mandara mountain, raining blood from his mouth like a storm-cloud, licking the blood-wet corners of his mouth with his tongue, churning the monkey host like Yama, like the Death that ends an age.
Seeing that lord of ogres shining like a kindled fire, Rama, best of men, drew back the string of his bow. Maddened by the twang, unable to bear the sound of it, the ogre charged at Rama. His arms like the coils of Vasuki, Rama spoke to Kumbhakarna as he came on, cloud-like, mountainous, driven like a cloud on the wind: Come, lord of ogres, and do not despair. I stand here, bow in hand. Know me for the destroyer of the ogre race. You too will be lifeless in a moment.
Knowing him now for Rama, the ogre laughed in a warped, hideous voice and came on in a great rage, scattering the monkeys, rending their hearts with a laugh like the thunder of massed clouds. He is not Viradha, he said, not Kabandha, not Khara, not Vali, not Marica; it is Kumbhakarna who has come. He showed his iron mallet: with this, he said, he had beaten gods and demons of old; the loss of his nose and ears gave him not the least pain; let Rama try his strength on Kumbhakarna’s body, and then Kumbhakarna would eat him.
Hearing his boast, Rama loosed fair-plumed arrows, but the enemy of the gods was neither shaken nor pained by those shafts swift as lightning; the very arrows that had cut down the sal trees and killed the monkey bull Vali did his body little harm. Drinking the arrows into himself the way a mountain drinks its many streams, swinging his fast, dreadful mallet, he beat off the rush of Rama’s arrows. Blood-smeared, terror even to the armies of the gods, Kumbhakarna swung that mallet and scattered the monkey host.
Then Rama took up the Vayavya weapon, the missile of the wind-god, and loosed the arrow that shore off the mace-holding right arm; and as the arm was cut through, the ogre let out a terrible shriek. That raised arm, huge as the coils of a serpent, holding its palmyra tree, Rama cut off with a gold-etched arrow charged with the Aindra weapon of Indra. Severed by Raghava’s arrow, the mountainous arm fell with its mallet onto Sugriva’s army and killed close to a company of monkeys. The maimed survivors drew off to the edge and stood watching the terrible battle of Rama and Kumbhakarna. Like a mountain whose peak a great sword has struck off, Kumbhakarna tore up a palmyra with his other arm and ran at Rama; and Rama, with a golden arrow charged with the Aindra weapon, cut off that raised arm too, and it came down crushing trees, rocks, monkeys, and ogres as it fell.
With both arms cut away, Kumbhakarna opened a mouth like the fire beneath the sea and, roaring, still came at Rama, like Rahu falling on the full moon in the sky. Rama took two crescent-headed arrows charged with the Aindra weapon and cut off the ogre’s two feet; and the feet fell away, making the quarters and the corners of the sky, the caves of the Trikuta mountain, the great ocean, Lanka, and the armies of monkeys and ogres ring with the sound. Armless and footless now, the ogre dilated his mouth and rushed on at Rama; and Rama filled that mouth with sharp gold-shafted arrows, so that, his mouth packed full, Kumbhakarna could not speak, moaned with difficulty, and swooned.
Then Rama took up an arrow like a ray of the sun, like the rod of Brahma and the Death that ends an age, swift as the wind, charged with the Aindra weapon, bright as blazing sun and fire, matching in speed the thunderbolt and the ashani of great Indra, and loosed it at the ranger of the night. Sped from Raghava’s arm, that arrow lit all ten quarters with its brilliance, terrible as a smokeless fire, racing to rival Indra’s own bolt. It shore off the head of the lord of ogres, huge as a great mountain peak, with its rounded teeth and its swinging earrings, exactly as Indra of old struck off the head of Vritra. Crowned with its earrings, that vast head shone like the moon set in mid-heaven at the close of night when the star Punarvasu rises.
Cut off by Rama’s arrow, that mountainous head fell tumbling through the houses of the highway, the gate-towers, and the high rampart, breaking them as it went. The huge body, tall as the Himalaya, dropped into the sea, crushing the great crocodiles, the best of fish, and the serpents, and sank down into the earth. As the mighty Kumbhakarna, enemy of brahmins and gods, was killed in the field, the earth and all the mountains shook, and the gods raised a great shout of joy. In the sky the divine seers and the great rishis, the serpents, gods, spirits, suparnas, guhyakas, yakshas, and gandharvas were filled with delight at Rama’s prowess.
At this great killing Ravana’s steadfast kinsfolk, cut to the heart, cried out at the very sight of the best of the Raghus the way rutting elephants cry out at the sight of a lion. Having killed Kumbhakarna in the field, Rama shone in the midst of the monkey host like the sun set free from the mouth of Rahu, the darkness of the heavens dispersed. Many monkeys, their faces open as full-blown lotuses, took the deepest joy in the death of that fearful enemy and worshipped the prince who had brought them to their desire. Having killed in the field the never-conquered Kumbhakarna, churner of the armies of the gods, Bharata’s elder brother rejoiced as Indra, king of the immortals, rejoiced when he made an end of the great demon Vritra.
The gist: Piercing him first with the Raudra weapon, Rama then cut off both of Kumbhakarna’s arms with the Vayavya and Aindra weapons, severed his feet, and at last struck off his enormous head with a bolt like Indra’s thunderbolt, just as Indra once beheaded Vritra. The body fell into the sea and the head onto the highway; the gods rejoiced, and Ravana’s kinsfolk cried out in grief.
Source: Srimad Valmiki Ramayana, Yuddhakanda, Cantos 60-67 (Gita Press, Gorakhpur).
Based on: Valmiki Ramayana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)