The Ramayana (66 page)

“I used to wonder how any warrior of this world could conquer the Devas and the Asuras. Now I do not wonder any more: no Deva or Asura could match Ravana.”

Slowly, majestically, Ravana came toward them. As he gazed at the advancing rakshasa army and at its master, Rama's eyes turned red as blood. Between clenched teeth he said, “But he abducted my Sita and holds her his prisoner.”

He quivered, and Vibheeshana was afraid when he sensed Rama's fury. Then Rama smiled again and said wryly, “But this anger is for Ravana. And I swear the Lord of Lanka will taste my wrath.”

He drew an arrow from his quiver and fitted it to his bowstring. He stood waiting for Ravana to come within range. But at that moment, he saw the rakshasa army maneuver shrewdly, so its king was hidden from him. Like a shark hidden in a school of fish, Ravana fell on the vanaras. The Demon scythed through the monkeys, hewing off heads and arms and bisecting trunks with dreadful ease.

The first great vanara who confronted Ravana was Sugriva. Arrows from the golden bow of the Lord of evil sang around him in a storm. Sugriva hurled boulder after boulder at the Rakshasa; stone and shaft met in flight and shattered against each other. Ravana fixed an astra like a serpent to his bow and shot the monkey king with it. Sugriva cast a rock at the fiery serpent that flew hissing at him. But like a real serpent, the crooked shaft dodged around the stone and, straightening again, flashed into Sugriva's chest. He fell with a ringing cry and was rushed unconscious from the field.

Darkness took the vanara army. Ravana seemed to grow as tall as the sky; he loomed like a great cloud over the monkeys. Fifty vanaras charged the Demon. But they could not withstand him, and they either fled or were killed. Ravana's sinister laughter echoed through the battlefield, sending waves of panic through the monkeys. With no Sugriva to stand against him, the Rakshasa stormed, bloody, through the jungle army. Monkeys lay dead in his path like so many dolls, arms and legs hewn away, heads hacked from trunks; a river of blood flowed from his fearsome archery. Behind him, around him, swarmed the fighting rakshasas, their morale restored. They roared victory to their king and cut down the monkeys like stalks of tender cane in a field. The sky above the battle was dark; Ravana's volleys hid the face of the sun. His archery was not a thing of the times, but an arcane power, reminiscent of pristine ages when every warrior of the earth was like a God. The vanaras' screams rippled the river of blood that flowed through Lanka's streets and out her northern gate.

Rama picked up his bow, from where he had set it down when he saw Ravana was protected by the wheeling guards who never left his side. But a hand restrained him. Lakshmana said, “Don't go yet to fight the Rakshasa. Let me trim his arrogance first.”

Rama smiled. “Go with my blessing.”

Lakshmana bent at Rama's feet. He took the dust from them and marked his brow with it. Rama said, “Watch him carefully, Lakshmana. He is no ordinary warrior; no one in the three worlds has yet defeated him. When you fight him, remember your own weaknesses. Be careful, be vigilant; he is a great master.”

Even as Rama spoke to Lakshmana, Hanuman charged Ravana, roaring. Dodging past the fire tide of arrows, the son of the wind came face to face, again, with the Lord of Lanka. No other vanara or rakshasa stood between them. Ravana's horses reared to see the towering monkey.

Hanuman said, “Rakshasa, you have Brahma's blessing that no Deva or yaksha, gandharva or Danava may kill you. But I am a vanara, Evil One, and you have no boon to protect you against this fist of mine. It shall be your death, Ravana.”

But Ravana was calm. In his deep rasp of a voice he said, “Come, monkey, kill me with your blow if you can and you shall have everlasting fame. Come strike me, and let us see how strong you are. But remember, if you fail, I will strike you back and you will die.”

Hanuman snarled, “Have you forgotten, taunter, how I killed your boy with a blow of this fist? Or perhaps he was not your own?”

Ravana's ten faces flashed into sight, snarling in memory of dead Aksha. Like dark lightning, he struck Hanuman on his chest and the vanara fell back, stunned. But shaking the fog of that blow from his head, Hanuman sprang up at once. Leaping into the air, he struck Ravana back like thunder exploding. Ravana roared; he collapsed against the side of his chariot.

In a moment the Rakshasa stood up again. He smiled at Hanuman. “Well done, monkey! You are stronger than I thought.”

Hanuman cried, “Fie on me that you live after I struck you. But you shall not live after I do again!”

Once more, he leaped high to fetch Ravana another blow. But as he came down, swinging his arm, the golden chariot vanished with maya. Hanuman howled in frustration and looked around for the Rakshasa. He saw Ravana across the battlefield, engaging Neela.

But Ravana did not relish the fight against Neela, either: using the siddhis of mahima and anima, Neela made himself big and small, as he chose. At times he grew tall as a tree; but when Ravana attacked him, he shrank to the size of a little spider monkey, so the Rakshasa's arrows hummed harmlessly past him.

Tiny Neela jumped onto Ravana's banner and chattered down at him. Then he grew again and struck the Demon a bone-shaking blow. But when Ravana hewed at him with his sword, the vanara was a little monkey, gibbering at the king whose swinging blade came nowhere near him. The Master of Lanka was beside himself.

“Stand and fight, coward!” he raged.

But Neela grimaced at him and cried back, “Shame on you, Ravana, that you fight someone as small as me. No wonder you have taken to kidnapping women.”

Ravana invoked the agneyastra and shot it at Neela, who was perched on the back of one of the Rakshasa's chariot horses, terrifying the animal. A flash of green fire flared out and engulfed little Neela. But instead of being consumed by the incendiary shaft, Neela only fainted briefly: Neela was Agni's son, and the father would not burn his own child.

Ravana thought the vanara was dead. Baying in triumph, he turned his chariot to where he saw his rakshasas fleeing the battle. They saw a warrior approaching that none of them dared face. Lakshmana had come to fight, and Lanka quaked at the sound of his bowstring. Lakshmana's challenge rang out across the field and Ravana advanced on him, smoldering.

For a long time they stood, demon king and human prince, staring at each other unwinkingly, locked in a duel of gazes before they fought with arrows. Neither looked away. Then Lakshmana cried, “Are you afraid to fight, Rakshasa, that you just stand staring?”

Ravana threw back his head and roared like ten lions. “Foolish human, dare you come to fight me alone? Prepare to pass through Yama's gates.”

Lakshmana cried back, “I have heard enough about your valor and your prowess. Have you come to boast or to fight? Show me with arrows how great you really are.”

Swift as light, Ravana's narachas flashed at Lakshmana. But quicker himself, the kshatriya cut away the burning heads of those shafts as they flew at him; they fell tamely around him, a rain of headless serpents. They writhed briefly on the ground and vanished. Already, Ravana loosed more smoking barbs at Lakshmana; quicker than the eye saw, the prince cut them down again.

So it went: a scintillating duel between two great archers, both masters. They admired each other's skill, and at times even shouted out their admiration across the long field where they fought. All around, rakshasa and vanara stood spellbound, watching.

Ravana tired of the battle of lesser weapons. He invoked an agneyastra and, with no warning that he had summoned a devastra, shot that deep shaft at Lakshmana. But from the first sound the astra made through the air, Lakshmana knew what it was. He cut life out of it with a clutch of fluid and feminine arrows. So that when the agneyastra grazed his brow, it merely dazed him slightly.

Roaring, Lakshmana loosed a coruscant volley that cleft the bow like an arc of night in Ravana's hand. Without his bow, Ravana was hurt often and sharply. Blood bloomed on his dark, smooth skin, where Lakshmana's barbs found their mark. Crying out in pain, Ravana invoked a more powerful weapon than any he had cause to use since his war against the Devas.

Ravana bent his head briefly in his chariot and invoked Brahma, grandsire of the worlds. He invoked a weapon of cosmic fire. Ravana invoked the brahmashakti and, in a wink, cast the howling thing at Lakshmana. Like a comet, the recondite missile flamed at the human prince. Quick as Lakshmana was, he did not have the speed or the power to cut the shakti down. A small sun, it took him squarely in the chest; with a cry, Lakshmana fell.

Swift as time, Ravana was at the fallen prince's side. He leaped down from his golden chariot and tried to lift Lakshmana into it. He wanted to parade his corpse through the streets of Lanka. But the Rakshasa could not budge the prince's body. Ravana, who had once drawn out Kailasa by its roots, could not move Lakshmana of Ayodhya. The Demon stood astounded. He saw that the fair kshatriya still breathed. The Rakshasa was thunderstruck. This human had been felled by Brahma's shakti; it still blazed in his breast, hissing and spitting fire. Yet Lakshmana lived.

With a yell, Hanuman flew out of the sky at the bewildered Ravana. He fetched him six blows like earthquakes across his chest and face. Blood welled in the Rakshasa's mouth; the ten heads roared and their owner reeled. Hanuman picked up Lakshmana easily, with love, and carried him through the air, back to Rama. Rama laid his blue hand on his brother's brow and he rose instantly as if from a slumber. Wailing in strange anxiety at Rama's touch, the shakti flew out of his brother's chest and back to Ravana. At once Lakshmana's wound closed, then vanished tracelessly.

Meanwhile, his pride stung by Hanuman, Ravana now went among the vanaras like Death himself. He fought with weapons and strength beyond their understanding, and thousands of monkeys were sacrificed to his fury. Wailing at the hell fire he attacked them with, they ran to Rama and cried, “We cannot stand against the Rakshasa. He is too terrible for us.”

Rama picked up his bow and started toward Ravana. But Hanuman came running to him. “Ravana fights from a chariot; you should not face him from the ground. Allow me, Rama, to bear you into battle.”

The son of the wind grew immense, and bent at Rama's feet. Rama climbed onto Hanuman's shoulders. And thus the prince of men first went to meet the king of the rakshasas in battle. The sound of Rama's bowstring silenced both armies. He cried across the field, “Ravana, prepare to die! Not Indra or Yama, not Agni, Surya, or Brahma will save you now, not Siva himself. You will not find sanctuary from me anywhere, Rakshasa. Did no one tell you what I did to your people at Janasthana, that you are fool enough to want battle with me?”

Glowering, red-eyed, ten-headed with a fiendish snarl on every face, now entirely a Demon from the pit, Ravana replied with a burn of arrows aimed not at Rama but at Hanuman who carried him. But Hanuman had Brahma's boon that no astra could harm him. Undimmed, he plucked those barbs calmly from his flesh and shook their embers from his fur. He loomed over the two armies, with Rama like a star on his shoulders.

Then, all at once, Rama was a blur, a dream of movement on Hanuman's back. No one could tell where he drew an arrow from his quiver or fitted it to his bowstring, or when he shot it at his enemy. But the report of his weapon was a crack of thunder. In a thunderflash, Ravana's chariot was broken, his horses were killed, and his sarathy struck unconscious. Rama seemed to fight from another, unworldly dimension of time. Ravana had no answer to the prince's transcendent archery, and a shaft as jagged as Indra's vajra plucked the Rakshasa's bow out of his hand.

Stunned silence fell on the armies of darkness and light. Serenely, Rama fitted another shaft, with a glowing crescent head, to his bowstring. Languidly, he knocked Ravana's golden crown from his head. Gone was all the Rakshasa's glory, faded in a moment his majesty. He cringed beside his shattered chariot. On the beaming Hanuman's shoulders, Rama shone like a dark blue sun.

Then Rama lowered his bow! A smile touched his lips. Rama cried in awful gentleness to his enemy, so both armies heard him clearly, “I think you are tired after all the fighting you have done, all the vanaras you have slain. I could kill you now, but it would be too easy. Go home, Ravana. Be better prepared before you come to fight me again. Go now, Rakshasa.”

Rama's mercy was more savage than any astra. His ten faces dark with shame, his spirit broken, like his chariot and his crown, Ravana crept back into Lanka with his worthless life, which he now owed his enemy.

The cheering of the vanaras woke the world from its swoon of disbelief. They yelled Rama's name, again and again, and yet again; oh, they believed in him completely now! Watching from above, the Devas wore smiles on their unearthly faces. For the first time, they actually saw that Rama was more than a match for the Demon of Lanka.

 

20. A monster is roused

Ravana sat trembling on his crystal throne. Again and again he saw Rama's arrows fly at him: shafts of time. He saw his chariot shattered, his horses cut down, and his crown broken. He saw Rama's dark, brilliant face above him and heard the beautiful voice that mocked him before both armies, “I could kill you now, but it would be too easy. You are tired. Go home, Ravana. Come back with a new chariot and another bow.”

Ravana sat trembling with that humiliation. Grimly he spoke to his rakshasas. “You saw how a mere man shamed me on the field. It seems all my tapasya is worth nothing. When he gave me his boon against the Devas and Asuras Brahma said to me, ‘Beware of man.' But I did not listen. I thought, which man would dare to stand against me in battle?”

He sighed, that matchless Rakshasa, humbled. Slowly he went on: “Many are those who have cursed me. A yuga ago, I ravished a chaste woman called Vedavati, and she cursed me. Perhaps Sita is Vedavati, born again to be my death. When I look at her face, I feel I know her from another time. For long ages, I have ruled the world; once an Ikshvaku king called Anaranya foretold that a prince born in the House of the Sun would kill me. I paid him no mind then, but now I fear it is Dasaratha's son Rama he meant.