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An army of bears and monkeys is sitting on the shore of the sea, eating fruit. It marched here from Pravarshana with its nails for weapons, carrying hills and trees. In front of it now is water. Rama will describe it as he asks how to cross: deep, crowded with makaras, serpents, and fish, hard to cross in every way. The hands that carried hills here are idle. A kingdom has already been given on this sand, with sea water and a tilak. The sea, whose water was called for at the anointing, has yet to be asked anything.
The one asking how to cross is Rama, whose arrow, as Vibhishana says in his first sentence, dries up tens of millions of seas. He asks anyway. What follows is two answers, entreat the sea or dry it. Kusha grass on the shore. Spies who forget their disguise, a letter in Lanka, a spy kicked for his counsel, like the brother before him. Three days, a doha spoken in anger, a flame inside the sea. And the sea itself on the shore with a golden platter, naming the two monkeys at whose touch mountains will float.
Before the crossing
The main figures in this episode
- Rama who bows his head to the sea before he sits, sits for three days, and only then asks for his bow.
- Lakshmana who has no faith in fate and says so. His remedy his brother hears with a laugh and then, three days later, takes up with the bow in his hand.
- Vibhishana Lanka’s new king, whose counsel to entreat the sea sets the episode moving.
- Sugriva the king of the monkeys, who orders the enemy’s spies maimed and sent back.
- Shuka Ravana’s spy, who came in a monkey’s body, carried Lakshmana’s letter home, counseled his master in open court. He crossed back over the water to Rama, to walk away a sage.
- Ravana who laughs three times in this episode, smiles once with fear in his mind, and kicks once.
- The sea who says his first word after a flame has risen in his breast, and who then gives the way.
- Nala and Nila two monkey brothers, named once in a spy’s list and once by the sea, who were blessed by a rishi in childhood.
- Shiva and Parvati, Kakabhushundi and Garuda two of the pairs between whom the story is being told. Each teller speaks to his listener once in this episode, within a few lines of the other.
- Tulsidas who writes his own name into the kand’s last chhand, and turns on his own mind a word the letter and the narration have used for Ravana.
A counsel, and a dissent
Tulsi opens the block with a sentence of his own about Rama, who has just given a kingdom to a rakshasa. Those who leave such a Lord and worship another are beasts, he says, lacking only a tail and horns. Then the line turns back to the sand: knowing Vibhishana for his own servant, Rama took him as his own. Rama’s nature pleased the minds of the monkey kind.
Then Rama spoke words that keep the rule of right conduct. The verse here calls him all-knowing and the dweller in every heart, become a man for a reason (grace to his devotees, the commentary says). His question is a practical one. “Listen, Sugriva, and you, Vibhishana, lord of Lanka: by what means is this deep sea to be crossed? It is crowded with makaras, serpents, and fish of many kinds, very deep, and hard to cross in every way.” The one who knows everything asks two others how to cross a sea, and describes the sea to them while he asks.
The lord of Lanka answered. Now the verse itself names Vibhishana by his new title, which in the last episode was in Rama’s mouth. “Listen, Rama: your arrow dries up tens of millions of seas. Even so, the rule of right conduct is sung thus: go and entreat the sea.” The commentary adds that the entreaty comes first. Then the doha: “Lord, the sea is the elder of your line. He will think it over and tell you the way, and the whole army of bears and monkeys will cross the sea without any effort.” The commentary glosses the elder as an ancestor. A sea that is kin is a sea that can be asked.
Rama answered. “Friend, you have told a good way. Let it be done, if fate helps.” He takes the counsel with the word friend and adds a condition of his own. The second half of the chaupai says at once that one listener dissented. This counsel did not please Lakshmana’s mind, and hearing Rama’s words he was greatly pained. The verse gives the displeasure to the counsel and the pain to Rama’s words, and what Lakshmana answers, when he speaks, is the word fate.
“Lord, what trust is there in fate? Dry up the sea. Let anger into your mind. Fate is one support for a coward’s mind. It is the lazy who cry fate, fate.” What he asks for will come in its turn: Rama will sit on the shore for three days first, and then call for the bow himself.
Hearing him, Rama laughed and spoke. “We will do just that. Keep patience in your mind.” Having explained it to his younger brother in this way, Rama went near the sea.
Kusha grass on the shore, before the sea
First he bowed his head in salutation. Then he spread kusha grass on the shore and sat down. Tulsi gives the king of all the worlds two motions before the water, a bowed head and a seat of grass, in one line. The grass has been on this shore before. In the Kishkindhakand the search party sat down here on kusha, vowing not to go back without news of Sita. Rama sits by the same sea on the same kind of grass, waiting for an answer from the water.
The second half of the chaupai moves the reader to another place without a pause. As soon as Vibhishana had come to Rama, Ravana had sent spies after him. So the spies were sent during the last episode, and what one of them reports in Lanka later includes the anointing. While a head is bowed to the sea on this shore, Lanka’s eyes are already among the monkeys.
The line says nothing of what Rama said to the sea. The entreaty is reported later, in a doha, by its result and its length: three days. The anger that comes after them has this seat of grass, and the bowed head, behind it.
Spies in borrowed bodies
Ravana’s spies, taking monkey bodies by deceit, saw all the doings. In their hearts they praised Rama’s virtues and his love for one who had come to him for refuge. They came to see, and saw all of it, all the lilas, the commentary says. What the seeing produced in them was praise, kept in the heart. They had been sent after Vibhishana, and what they watched was what became of him.
Then, openly, with great love, they began to speak of Rama’s nature, and forgot their disguise. The monkeys knew them for the enemy’s spies, bound them all, and brought them to Sugriva. The spies are found out by the thing they could not keep in.
Sugriva said: “Listen, all you monkeys: maim the night-walkers and send them back.” The sentence has been spoken once before in this kand, across the sea. When Vibhishana had said in Ravana’s court that an envoy is not killed, Ravana laughed and said: maim the monkey and send him back. Now the king of the monkeys gives the same order for the night-walkers. Hearing Sugriva’s words, the monkeys ran, bound the spies, and paraded them around the army on every side.
The monkeys began to beat them in many ways. They cried out piteously, and even so they were not let go. Then they said the thing that saved them. “Whoever cuts off our nose and ears, upon him is the oath of Rama, king of Kosala.” The commentary marks it as the spies’ cry. Ravana’s spies, under the blows of Ravana’s enemies, call on the name of the one they were sent to watch, and it stops the hands.
Hearing it, Lakshmana called them all near. Pity came over him, and laughing, he had them freed at once. The man who asked, a few lines ago, for the sea to be dried in anger feels pity for bound night-walkers. The verse sets a laugh beside the pity.
Lakshmana’s letter
As he freed them he gave them something to carry. “Give this letter into Ravana’s hand,” and then, as the commentary fills in, what they are to say with it: “Destroyer of your line, read Lakshmana’s words.” The letter goes into a hand with a name for its reader. When it is read it will explain the name: do not destroy your line.
Then the doha, which is a message by mouth, and shorter than the letter it travels with. “Tell the fool my generous message by word of mouth: give Sita and meet him, or else your death has come.” The commentary stops on the word generous and opens it as full of grace, and names the one he is to meet: Rama. Inside the threat is an invitation: the king who kicked his brother out of his court is still asked to come and meet the one that brother went to.
At once the spies bowed their heads at Lakshmana’s feet and set out, telling a story of virtues as they went, Rama’s virtues in the commentary’s reading. The second half of the chaupai says as much itself: speaking Rama’s fame, they came to Lanka, and there they bowed their heads at Ravana’s feet. One journey, two bowed heads at two pairs of feet, and Rama’s fame told all the way between them.
Lanka’s court, and the first question
Laughing, Ravana asked his question, with the laugh he gave the bound envoy’s counsel in this hall and his wife’s plea in private. “Shuka, why do you not tell me how you fare?” Then the first news he asks for: “And then tell me the news of Vibhishana, whose death has come very near.” After the greeting, before the army, he wants to hear of his brother, sent out of this court with his foot.
“The fool gave up Lanka while he was ruling it. The unlucky one will become a weevil in the barley.” The commentary opens the picture: as the weevil is ground with the barley, so he will be killed with the men and the monkeys. Then the army, asked for as a taunt: “And then tell me of the army of bears and monkeys, which has come here driven by harsh Death.”
“Those whose lives have the poor soft-hearted sea for their keeper.” The commentary draws out the taunt: were the sea not between them and the rakshasas, the rakshasas would have killed and eaten them by now. He is mocking the water that will come to Rama’s feet before the episode is done. Then the brothers, by the word he used when he kicked his own brother, ascetics. “And then tell me of the ascetics, in whose hearts there is great fear of me.” The fear in the line is theirs, by his account. Tulsi will show his own fear a few lines on, when the letter is read.
The doha is three questions and a verdict. “Did you meet them, or did they turn back on hearing my fair fame with their ears? Why do you not tell me the splendor and strength of the enemy’s host? Your mind is very much dazed.” He asks whether his fame did the work of a war. He asks why the spy is silent about the enemy’s strength, and then names the spy’s state for him.
The spy’s answer, and that army
The spy answered, and the commentary names him as the speaker. “Lord, as you have asked me in your grace, so accept what I say, with your anger set aside.” The first news he gives is of the brother his master has just called a weevil. “When your younger brother went and met him, Rama marked him with the tilak the moment he arrived.” The commentary calls it the royal tilak. The man kicked out of this court was crowned at the other end of his road.
Then his own story. “Hearing with their ears that we were Ravana’s spies, the monkeys bound us and gave us pain of many kinds. They began to cut off our ears and our noses. When we put them on Rama’s oath, they let us go.”
“Lord, you asked about Rama’s army. It cannot be described with a hundred times ten million mouths.” Then he describes it. “An army of bears and monkeys of many colors, fierce-faced, huge of body, terrifying. The one who burned the city and killed your son: among all the monkeys, his strength is small.” The commentary names the son, Prince Aksha. The court is being told that the monkey brought before it bound, whose tail it set on fire, and who burned the city, is counted small across the sea. “Warriors of countless names, hard and dreadful, with the strength of countless elephants, vast and huge.”
Then the doha gives the names. Dvivida, Mayanda, Nila, Nala, Angada, Gada, Vikatasya, Dadhimukha, Kesari, Nishatha, Shatha, Jambavan: all of them masses of strength. Two of the twelve will be named again before the kand ends, by the sea.
“All these monkeys are the equal of Sugriva, and of their like there are tens of millions. Who could count so many? By Rama’s grace there is matchless strength in them, and they count the three worlds as a blade of grass. Ravana, I have heard it with my ears: eighteen padma are the troop-leaders of the monkeys.” A padma is a count far past tens of millions, and the eighteen, the commentary adds, are the leaders alone. “Lord, there is no monkey in that army who could not conquer you in battle.” His own spy says it to his face.
“All of them wring their hands in the greatest anger, and Rama does not give them the order. They would dry up the sea with its fish and its serpents, or else fill it up with huge mountains, and crush Ravana and mix him with the dust. Such words all the monkeys say. By nature they have no fear. They roar and threaten as if they wished to swallow Lanka.” The commentary gives the boast in the monkeys’ own voice: we will dry it, we will fill it. Between them and either plan stands an order not yet given.
The doha closes his account. “All the monkeys and bears are brave by nature, and besides, over their heads is Rama himself. Ravana, they can conquer tens of millions of Deaths in battle.” Ravana had said that the army came here driven by Death. The spy returns the word as a count of what the army can defeat.
Rama’s strength, and Ravana’s laughter
From the army the spy turns to Rama, over its heads. “A hundred thousand Sheshas could not sing the fullness of Rama’s splendor, strength, and wisdom. With one arrow he could dry up a hundred seas. Skilled in the rule of right conduct, he asked your brother.” The spy, who watched, gives Ravana Vibhishana’s counsel in its own order, the arrow and then the rule. He names the one who was asked: your brother. “Having heard his words, he is asking the sea for a path, with grace in his mind.” The commentary draws the consequence of the grace: that is why he does not dry it.
Hearing those words, Ravana laughed. The commentary marks the words that follow as his. “If his wit is of that kind, then monkeys are the helpers he has made.” The laugh comes before the sentence.
“He has taken the word of a born coward for proof, and set himself to wheedle the sea.” The commentary hears a child’s stubbornness in the wheedling. “Fool, why do you make false praise? I have found the measure of the enemy’s strength and wisdom.” Then: “One whose minister is the frightened Vibhishana: where in the world are victory and splendor for him?” The brother he drove out with a foot is counted as the enemy’s loss. Hearing the villain’s words, the spy’s anger rose, and judging the moment, he drew out the letter.
The letter is read
The spy held it out and spoke. “Rama’s younger brother gave this letter. Lord, have it read and cool your chest.” He hands over what he was given to carry, and adds a courtesy of his own about the comfort it will bring. Laughing, Ravana took it in his left hand. Tulsi names the hand. Then he called a minister, and the fool, as the verse calls him, had it read out.
The letter is two dohas, and the commentary marks them as what was written. The first is a warning. “Fool, do not destroy your line by pleasing your mind with words. Set against Rama, you will not be saved even in the refuge of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva.” The bound envoy in this hall and his wife in private have already told him the same: no god can keep Rama’s enemy. The letter is the third time.
The second doha is a choice. “Either give up your pride and become, like your younger brother, a bee at Rama’s lotus feet. Or else, villain, become a moth in the fire of Rama’s arrows, with your line.” The commentary adds what the letter leaves unsaid: do whichever of the two seems good to you. One road costs him his pride and keeps his line. The other keeps the pride and burns the line. And the brother he called a weevil is held up to him as the model, a bee at the feet.
Hearing it, Ravana was afraid in his mind. Smiling with his face, he said aloud for all to hear: “A man fallen on the ground reaches up with his hand to catch the sky. That is how the little ascetic plays with words.” Fear in the mind and a smile on the face, a word apart, and the words were for everyone present. He had said the ascetics feared him. Tulsi now says where the fear is.
Shuka’s plea, and the kick
Shuka spoke. The man sent across the water to watch speaks in open court and counsels the king who sent him. “Lord, take all of these words as true. Understand it, giving up your proud nature. Hear what I say with your anger set aside. Lord, give up your enmity with Rama.” He asks twice for the anger to be put down, once before the news and once before the counsel.
What he puts his hand on is what he saw. “Rama’s nature is very gentle, though he is king of all the worlds. The moment you meet him, he will show you grace. He will not keep a single offense of yours in his heart.” The bound envoy said this in this hall, that Rama would forget the offense of one who came for refuge. Vibhishana said it here. Now it comes from the man Ravana himself sent, who watched it come true for Vibhishana across the sea.
“Give Sita to Rama. Lord, do this much that I ask.” When he spoke of giving Sita back, the fool struck him with his foot. The envoy said it to this king in this hall, his wife said it in private. His brother said it here twice, and Lakshmana sent it by word of mouth. Now Ravana’s own spy says it, and is kicked, as his brother was in this hall for the same words. Tulsi uses the same phrase for it.
What happened next is also what happened to the brother, and the commentary says so in a bracket: like Vibhishana. Bowing his head at the feet, he went to where Rama was. He made his obeisance and told his own story, and by Rama’s grace he got back his own state. The commentary names the state: the form of a sage.
Then Shiva turns to his listener and tells her who the spy was. “By the curse of the rishi Agastya, Parvati, he had become a rakshasa. He had been a sage with knowledge.” This is the Agastya at whose feet the two brothers fell in the forest, in the Aranyakand. “Bowing to Rama’s feet again and again, the sage went to his own ashram.” Ravana sent a spy across the water, and a sage walked out of this story to his hermitage, with a curse lifted on the way.
Three days, and that doha
The verse comes back to the shore with a count. “The dull sea would not heed entreaty. Three days went by. Then Rama spoke in anger: without fear there is no love.” The commentary turns the page with one word, over here. Rama, who sat down on kusha grass, has been entreating for three days.
The sea is what the line is about. The verse calls the sea dull, inert, the word the sea will use of himself when he explains. The words that follow are to Lakshmana. And the verse says how the line was spoken: in anger, a word Tulsi sets down himself. The sentence about fear and love is heard as a thing said at the end of patience.
Rama goes on. “Lakshmana, bring me the arrows and the bow. I will dry up the sea with the arrow of fire.” That was the younger brother’s remedy before anyone sat down, and now it is the elder’s. Then a list of things that go for nothing. “Entreaty to a fool, love for the crooked, fine counsel to a born miser,” which the commentary reads as the teaching of generosity. “The story of knowledge to one sunk in attachment, the praise of dispassion to the very greedy. Talk of calm to the angry, and the Lord’s story to the lustful: these bear fruit as seed sown in barren ground.” Seven right things said to the wrong hearers, and one figure for all of them. The first item on the list is the one he has been doing for three days.
The arrow, and the sea comes
So saying, Rama strung the bow. The next half-line records a mind on the shore: this counsel pleased Lakshmana’s mind, and pleased it greatly, in the commentary’s reading. What he said before the sitting has become what is being done after it, and the verse lets him be glad in one half-line. Then Rama fitted the terrible arrow, which the commentary names as the arrow of fire, and a flame rose inside the sea’s breast.
The arrow has only been fitted, and the flame is already inside the water. The shoals of makaras, serpents, and fish were in distress. When the sea knew that the creatures were burning, he filled a golden platter with jewels of many kinds. He gave up his pride, and came in the form of a brahmin. The water that was called dull moved when the things living in it began to burn. When he speaks, the verse will call him afraid.
Before the sea can speak, the teller changes. The doha is addressed to the king of birds, and the commentary marks the speaker: Kakabhushundi, to Garuda. Shortly before, it was Shiva, to Parvati, naming the spy’s curse. “The plantain bears fruit only when it is cut, though one water it with ten million efforts. The low one does not heed entreaty, listen, king of birds. He bends only when he is scolded.” In the figure the cutting is what brings the plantain to fruit. The sea, who has come with a platter, will be the story’s helper before the episode is over.
The sea asks pardon
Afraid, the sea took hold of Rama’s feet. “Forgive, lord, all my faults.” Then his account of himself, a description of what he is made of. “Sky, wind, fire, water, and earth: the doing of these, lord, is dull by nature.” He puts himself in a list of five and gives the list one adjective, the one the doha of the three days gave him.
“At your prompting, maya made them for the sake of creation. All the books sing it. Whatever order the master has given a thing, it finds its happiness in staying that way.” What he is, he says, is of Rama’s making, and his stillness is the order he was given.
“The Lord did well to give me a lesson.” The commentary reads the lesson as a punishment too. “And the bounds, too, are of your making. A drum, a rustic, a shudra, a beast, a woman: all of these are fit for tadana.” The commentary reads tadana as instruction, and writes that all of these are fit to be taught.
“By the Lord’s might I will dry up, and the army will cross. And there is no greatness for me in that.” The commentary opens the greatness as his bounds: they would not survive the drying. “The Lord’s command cannot be set aside. So the Vedas sing. Whatever pleases you, I will do it at once.” He has set both things in one breath, that the drying would cost him his bounds and that the command stands above that. He ends with an offer. Rama answers the last sentence.
The way, and Nala and Nila
Hearing those very humble words, Rama smiled and spoke. After three days on the grass, a bow strung, and a flame in the water, what Rama does when the sea has finished speaking is smile. “Dear one, tell me the way by which the army of monkeys may cross.” The question is the one he asked Sugriva and Vibhishana at the start of the episode, by what means the sea is to be crossed. Now he asks it of the sea.
The sea answered. “Lord, Nila and Nala are two monkey brothers. In their childhood they received a rishi’s blessing. At their touch, even heavy mountains will float on the sea by your might.” These are the two names from the spy’s list of twelve, the third and the fourth. The crossing of the whole army has come down to them. What qualifies them is a blessing received as boys, and the sea adds the other half: the floating is by Rama’s might.
“I too, holding the Lord’s majesty in my heart, will help according to my strength.” The commentary adds, as far as I am able. “In this way, lord, have the sea bound, so that this fair fame is sung in the three worlds.” The water that was to be dried asks to be bound, and names the fame that will come of it. He had said a moment earlier that the drying would leave him no greatness. The binding leaves him a part in the story.
Then a request from the sea’s own shore. “With this arrow, lord, kill the villains who live on my northern shore, heaps of sin.” Hearing the pain in the sea’s mind, Rama took it away at once. The commentary says how, with the arrow, by killing those villains. The arrow fitted for the sea found a mark the sea chose. Seeing Rama’s great strength and prowess, the sea rejoiced and was glad. He told Rama the whole story, which the commentary reads as the story of those villains, bowed at his feet, and went.
The kand ends, and Tulsi’s own line
The sea went to his own home, and this counsel pleased Rama. Then the chhand leaves the story. “This story, which takes away the stain of the Kali age, Tulsi the servant has sung as far as his understanding reaches.” The poet writes his name into the closing of the kand and sets his own measure beside it. Then the virtues: “Rama’s virtues are the house of joy. They end doubt and subdue despair. Give up every hope and every reliance, and sing them and hear them always, foolish mind.” The commentary opens the hope and reliance as the world’s.
The word for the mind at the end of the chhand is a word this kand has given Ravana again and again. In Sita’s mouth in the grove, in the narration, and in Lakshmana’s letter: fool. The letter said it to a king who laughed as he took it. The poet, closing the kand, says it to his own mind.
Then the last doha of Sundarkand. “The singing of Rama’s virtues gives every good fortune. Those who hear it with respect cross the sea of being without a ship.” The kand has turned on the crossing of a sea. Its last line brings in a second one, the sea of being, crossed by hearing, with no ship at all. Earlier in this kand Sita, drowning in the sea of separation, called Hanuman her ship.
After the doha the Gita Press text marks the twenty-fourth pause of the month-long reading. Then the colophon: the fifth sopan of the Ramcharitmanas, which destroys all the sins of the Kali age, is complete. Sundarkand ends here.
The bridge is a matter for the next sopan. In Lankakand, Nila and Nala, the skilled ones, bind it, and by Rama’s grace the fame grows bright. This kand settles only that the sea will be bound, and by whom. It opened with a monkey leaping this water from a hill on this shore. It closes with the water itself bowing at the feet and going home.
Drying the sea, or making a road
The line about fear and love has everything it needs around it in the verse: a bowed head, a seat of kusha grass, three days. A sea the verse calls dull, and the anger Tulsi writes into the doha. The general rule, the plantain and the low one, comes after it and belongs to Kakabhushundi, told to Garuda. The doha of the three days is a thing Rama said on a shore at the end of his patience. Tulsi keeps the rule in a teller’s mouth.
Then there is the sea. He set his own bounds and Rama’s command side by side in one chaupai, and left the choice with Rama. The episode holds two answers to the same water, the younger brother’s, dry it, and the sea’s own, bind me. The second pleased Rama after the first had been his for the length of a strung bow. The arrow went where the sea asked it to go.
And there are the spies in borrowed bodies. They came to watch and began to praise, were freed on Rama’s oath, and carried a letter home. One of them told his master in open court to take every word of it as true. He was kicked for it, crossed the water to the shore the letter came from, and the curse on him was lifted. Ravana sent him, Ravana kicked him, and a sage went home to his ashram. On this shore, a man sat before silent water for three days, entreating it. The way across, when it came, came from the mouth of the water.
The same story, elsewhere: Valmiki’s Ramayana, chapter 24: The Building of the Bridge.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Sundarkand, doha 50 to 60, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.