The chariot is moving. The horses are in harness, the reins sit in the charioteer’s fist, the fighter has his shield on one arm and his sword in the other hand. Yet in a battle the sword is the last thing that comes into play. Before that the enemy is far off, and a distant enemy calls for other weapons: things to throw, things to draw, things that cleave. Rama now fits those weapons onto the chariot one by one, the way a warrior counts his gear before he goes down into the fight.
Giving is the battle-axe of that chariot. Intelligence is its fierce spear, and the highest knowledge is its hard bow. The three weapons work at three different distances. The axe is a close weapon, heavier than the sword, and its work is to split; the knot the sword cannot cut, the axe breaks open. Here Rama sets giving. Whatever has been hoarded, whatever has set hard inside a closed fist, giving is the axe that comes down on it, and once a person learns to give, the knot of his grip begins to loosen by itself. The shakti is a weapon for throwing, a spear that leaves the hand and reaches an enemy standing well out of range, and fierce means that where it strikes, it does not stop. Intelligence is of that kind. It arrives where the blow must land before the body has moved. And the bow is the weapon that kills from farthest away. A hard bow is one that takes real strength to string and draw, and in return sends its arrow farther and deeper than any other. Rama names that bow the highest knowledge, and nothing on this chariot reaches farther.
A bow needs arrows, and arrows need a quiver. A mind that is stainless and unmoving is the quiver of that chariot, and calm, restraint, and observance are its many arrows. The quiver’s work looks small, and without it the archer is nothing. The arrows stand in it with their heads up, within reach of the hand, and they stay in place through every lurch of the chariot. A torn quiver spills its arrows. A quiver that will not hold still keeps the hand from closing on one. Rama’s quiver is stainless, which is to say free of wrong, and unmoving, which is to say steady. Arrows kept in a soiled mind come out soiled, and a mind that keeps swinging never releases an arrow at the right moment. The arrows that fill this quiver carry three names. Shama, the calm that keeps the mind in hand. Yama, the restraints, with non-injury at their head. And niyama, the observances, whose count begins with cleanliness. Tulsidas calls them many arrows, because the restraints are many and so are the observances, and a steady mind can send each one of them exactly where it belongs.
Now the part a warrior wears on his body. Armor. Weapons serve only while the fighter is using them, but armor guards him even when his attention is elsewhere, when an arrow comes from a direction his eye was not watching. Rama says the armor of this chariot cannot be pierced, that no arrow will break it, and that this armor is reverence for the Brahmins and the guru. On a head that bows before the guru there is no place left for a blow to land. And in the second half of the same line Rama sets a seal on it: there is no other means of victory to equal this. Of all the parts he has named so far, this armor alone receives that sentence.
And here one knot in Vibhishana’s question comes quietly undone. He had counted three things missing: a chariot, armor to guard the body, and protection for the feet. Rama had already answered for the chariot. Now the answer for the armor has come. The body on which Vibhishana could see no armor stands clothed in the one armor nothing can pierce. The chariot now carries both its weapons and its defense. What remains is a single sentence, in which Rama will give the whole chariot its name.
Source: Tulsidas, Ramcharitmanas, Lanka Kanda