The Ramayana (30 page)

“It is his first battle against evil on such a scale.”

“Lakshmana is with him.”

“Rama is the sleeper on the waters. What can a band of jungle rakshasas do against him?”

“You forget Khara is Pulastya's grandson.”

Pulastya was one of the original Saptarishi, the seven sages Brahma created in the beginning from his mind.

“Rama was not born to be killed by the likes of Khara. One day he will stand against Ravana of Lanka, and then dharma and adharma will be tested against each other on earth.”

Khara drew near Panchavati. At the heart of his force, twelve ferocious demons ringed him round in their chariots. Enormous Mahakapala, Sthulaksha, Pramathi, and Trisiras rode behind the legion, and Dushana rode at its head. Like a horde of malefic planets came the rakshasa army, as if to harry the sun and the moon.

Rama saw the omens of the sky, the birds that flew in alarm before Khara. He saw the ring round the sun and the crimson cloud above; Varuna's bow hummed impatiently in his hands. Rama cried to Lakshmana, “My right hand throbs; my arrows are smoking in their quiver. I feel as I did when Parasurama stood before me. But we must be careful, Lakshmana, and today I must deprive you of the pleasure of battle. Take Sita up to the cave on the hillside; we must be on our guard against Surpanaka.”

Rama watched them leave. He strapped on his armor, light as the breeze. As he strung his bow, the power of that weapon surged through him. His astras hot in their quiver, Rama stood like Siva before he razed Daksha's yagna.

Khara arrived in Panchavati. He halted his legion and, with a horrible roar, the rakshasas attacked. Like rays of the sun, the demons' arrows, tridents, and javelins covered the sky. They fell on Rama like lightning. The prince was struck but never wounded, because his thin kavacha was magical. Then he replied. His arms were a blur, so even the Devas and rishis above could not see them. Like mortal thoughts his arrows flared at the rakshasas and they fell in swarms, hardly knowing how they died.

Rama strung his bow with astras: nalika, naracha, and vikarni blazed starfire at the shocked demons. They could not bear the fear those missiles brought and fled back to Khara, some of them screaming, others whimpering like children.

Astounded by Rama's valor, Khara rallied his people and advanced himself. Collecting their scattered courage, teeming around their king, the rakshasas charged Rama again. But quick as wishes, he drew a gandharvastra from his quiver and, chanting its mantra, shot it at the demon army. The rakshasas saw a blinding fireball flare at them through the sky. The unearthly weapon broke, whistling, among them. The astra separated into a thousand arrows of fire and light; Rama's shafts filled the quarters. They turned into serpents with heads of flames and fell on the howling demons: one shaft for each rakshasa. And not an arrow but it took a life, consuming the fiend it struck, making ashes of him.

Sudden desolation overtook Khara's army. Then Dushana plunged out of the ranks like streak lightning in his black chariot. His fangs were bared; myriad sorceries flashed around him to show he was a rakshasa with great powers of maya. Dushana's demons, the occult phalanx of Khara's army, rushed at Rama. They cast their spells at him: flaming trees, rocks that exploded over his head, disgorging a thousand other sorceries, and fire-spitting serpents.

Dushana barely saw Rama raise his bow, or the four arrows that flew at him in the heart of an instant. They cut down his chariot horses. Another blinding shaft killed his charioteer; three more pierced his armor, hurling agony through his blood. Roaring in shock, Dushana raised his mace and rushed at Rama. But so calmly, that prince cut off the rakshasa's arms with two crescent-tipped arrows and slew him with another through his heart.

The rakshasas who remained alive stood frozen around Khara. How could one man fight like this? Like two armies. Rama shot two more astras at Khara's legions. The monster's soldiers all perished, like little mountains felled by Indra's vajra of a thousand joints. At last just Khara and his three-headed, loathsome, and completely fearless commander, Trisiras, were left alive amidst the smoking ruin of his army of fourteen thousand.

Speechless, Khara mourned his brother Dushana. Trisiras cried, “Leave the kshatriya to me. I will drink his blood today!”

Roaring from three mouths on three grotesque heads, Trisiras flew at Rama. He too was a mayavi, a sorcerer, and he struck the prince with three arrows, complex and quick as sunbeams. Rama could not cut them down; at the last moment, he made them harmless with a mantra. Yet they stung him, and he cried, “Rakshasa, you have struck me thrice. No ordinary archer could do this.”

Fourteen arrows, deep as time, flew in formation from Rama's bow. They pierced the hearts of the rakshasa's horses and flew on up. They cut down the banner on his chariot, killed his charioteer, and finally they crashed into Trisiras's chest, so his six eyes bulged round. He rose screeching from the wreckage of his ratha and Rama cut his heads from his swollen body with three more lightlike shafts. The demon's blood flowed across Panchavati in three black rills while his heads rolled down the hillside.

Roaring louder than ever to keep his own courage up, Khara, king of the jungle, came to fight. He was even more of an archer than Trisiras and a fair battle broke out. The Devas above sighed, when from his whirlwind chariot Khara split Varuna's bow in Rama's hand. Rama seized up the Brahmadatta, and its jewels radiated shafts of fear into the rakshasa's heart. Now Rama's arrows sang as they flamed at the demon king. But Khara was a worthy adversary; it was true that Indra himself would have hesitated to fight him.

In the heat of battle, crimson-eyed Rama cried, “Serpent of the jungle, all your sins have borne fruit today. Prepare to die.”

But Khara roared back, “You crow because you killed a handful of common soldiers. But I am Khara, your death, and this mace in my hand will send you to Yama. Bid farewell to your life, princeling; I mean to drink your blood before the sun sets. Only then will I sleep in peace tonight.”

His dark mace raised aloft, he flew at Rama. But Rama shattered that dire weapon with a single shaft. He cried to the bewildered rakshasa, “Sleep you will, Khara: upon the earth as you would in the arms of a woman you have long desired. And the rishis of the Dandaka vana will roam the jungle in freedom again.”

With maya, Khara grew tall as a hill. He pulled up a sala tree by its roots and flung it at Rama. But the prince dodged it nimbly and struck the rakshasa with twenty sizzling arrows, so he screamed and tore them out of his flesh like poison thorns. Rama stepped back, for the demon ran at him again with his bare hands. He strung the Brahmadatta with an aindrastra. Invoking the king of the Devas, he shot Khara through his chest with that final weapon.

One moment, the rakshasa rushed at Rama with his claws outstretched to seize his throat; the next, he screamed as the astra struck him and his flesh fell away from his skeleton in anxiety to escape the intolerable pain of that missile. His heart exploded, then his giant head, and nothing was left of Khara but patches of blood, skin, and a heap of bones on the ground.

This triumph of the Avatara was beyond the wildest hopes of the Devas, who rained down shimmering petals like fireflies on Rama. The sky was full of gandharvas' songs, and dancing apsaras cast their shadows on saffron clouds above the sunset. Rama looked around him and saw the ground strewn with the corpses of the rakshasas and their elephants and horses, as plentifully as a yagnashala is with darbha grass. He sighed and, suddenly exhausted, sat down among the dead.

Their faces shining, Lakshmana and Sita emerged from their cave. Sita ran to Rama and flung her arms around him. Lakshmana fetched water from the river and, with equal love, his brother and his wife bathed his wounds.

*   *   *

Again and again Sita would embrace her husband. Her eyes were full of tears: of sorrow to see his injuries and of excitement at his dazzling victory.

 

10. In Lanka

There was a rakshasa called Akampana who was part of Khara's army. He hid himself, out of sight, and escaped Rama's arrows. Akampana headed straight for Lanka in his chariot that flew through the air. He arrived at the massive palace gates of the Sovereign of evil.

Within the doors of that magnificent palace, in a splendid sabha at its heart, was a black crystal throne encrusted with priceless jewels that were tribute paid by royal vassals throughout the three worlds. Upon this throne sat the Master of darkness. In a weird cone upon his neck were ten heads of varying features and sizes, all of them savage. Ravana was a monster, the most sinister and powerful rakshasa. Nothing about him was ordinary; all his ten heads thought for him, and his intelligence and knowledge were unrivaled in heaven or earth. He was the grandson of Brahma's son, Pulastya Muni: thus the Creator's own great-grandson. And he had Siva's blessing.

Ravana was thousands of years old. But he was a tapasvin; so he did not look even a small part of his true age. He kept women of every race, the most beautiful and seductive women from all the realms. He was an expert of the arcane tantra vidya, and they helplessly gave him their youth in his bed. Often the virgin who spent just a week with him emerged from his harem looking ten years older than when she had been brought to the Rakshasa. He was insatiable, and his lovemaking was a diabolic ritual: he drained a woman of her precious years, of her very destiny.

Ravana was an awesome monarch. His instinct ranged over his domains as the sun does over the earth. Within his ten satanic heads, he sensed all that happened throughout his empire. What he did not sense, where goodness and dharma raised their hated visage, his servants, to whom he entrusted dominion in his dreaded name, reported to him. And at once Ravana dispatched some venal or murderous agent to subvert or suppress it without mercy. His was a complex kingdom and he ruled over it by his own lights, his own dark wisdom.

Today his side throbbed and three of his heads ached relentlessly since morning. The Demon knew bad news was on its way, even before Akampana burst into his presence and fell sobbing at his feet. Ravana sighed like a ravine full of the wind. He spoke from the mouth on his central face, the one with the coppery eyes. He said sonorously, “Tell me, Akampana, what news of my cousins and my sister?”

The rakshasa from Janasthana stood trembling that he, who brought news as bad as his, could meet a swift death. Ravana said again, “Have no fear, Akampana; you know you can tell me anything.” Cajoling he sounded, almost gentle.

Akampana stared down at his feet. He drew a breath and said in a whisper, “My lord, all the rakshasas in Janasthana are dead. Khara is dead and Dushana; Trisiras is slain.”

Deep in all Ravana's eyes, there was a flicker, as if some unimaginable serpent had stirred from its slumber in his heart. The smile did not leave his frontal face, though the others grew grim. In the same cajoling tone, still casually, he asked, “Akampana, who did this thing?”

Akampana thought Ravana had taken the news very well. He said, “I escaped in my chariot, Lord.”

Ravana's eyes blazed briefly. “Who did it?”

“A man, Lord.”

“But I heard of no army that came to Janasthana.”

Akampana said nothing; he did not know where to look. Ravana said quietly, reasonably, “Whoever they are, don't they realize there is no escape for them? Not in Devaloka, because Indra fears me. Not with Kubera, Varuna, or Agni shall they find sanctuary; bold though they must surely be and gifted, to have razed Khara's army. I will find them, Akampana, and I will bring them here to Lanka.”

Not even Akampana liked to think what his master did with those he brought to the dungeons of Lanka. Akampana said softly, “Not them, Lord. Him.”

“What do you mean?” whispered Ravana, all his ten heads swiveling round to stare at his demon. Those heads were like an inverted bunch of macabre fruit. The one at the very top was the smallest and the most vicious; it was entirely puerile and malignant.

Akampana's voice rattled in his throat at the awful regard. Looking anywhere but at Ravana, he breathed, “One man killed them all.”

A roar began on the littlest, purely demoniacal face. Then the ten heads roared together, last of all the central one around which the others budded. The palace shook; the king's guards came running to his door, though none dared enter. Akampana thought his end had come. The ten faces now spoke together, as they did when the Rakshasa was out of control.

In ten voices Ravana cried, “You say one human killed Khara, Dushana, Trisiras, and all the army at Janasthana? Are you sure you haven't been drinking cane liquor all morning, Akampana?”

Akampana swallowed; he shivered at the change in his Emperor. But he managed to say again, “One man, Lord of the worlds. Just one man with his bow and arrows.”

Ravana stared from all his eyes, the heads cocked at many quizzical angles. He stared in disbelief at Akampana, who raised his hands to shield himself from that gaze.

He cried, “I beg you, listen to me, Lord.” The devilish heads grew attentive. “There was once a king called Dasaratha. He belonged to the race of Surya, to the royal House of Ikshvaku. He has a son called Rama, who is as blue as a wild lotus. Rama came to the Dandaka vana. His shoulders are wide as a bison's and he is as strong as a lion. He is a master of astras, and he killed the rakshasas of Janasthana.”

“Perhaps Indra sent a host to help him? Let us have the truth, rakshasa.”

“I thought of Indra when I saw Rama's archery. But no, Indra did not come to help Rama. His astras were a thousand arrows each, and each shaft turned into a five-headed, fire-mouthed serpent. Janasthana is a desolation. Those of us who survived, the handful who fled, have no sleep any more, for Rama's face haunts our dreams. I believe he has a brother called Lakshmana, who is his equal. But he took no part in the battle.”