विराधसंवादः शस्त्रप्रहारश्च

At the end of the previous sarga Lakṣmaṇa had made his vow; in this one, before the fighting, there is an exchange of words. Virādha spoke again, filling the forest with his voice: ‘Answer me, since I ask: who are you two, and where are you going?’ That even a rākṣasa asks his opponent who he is belongs to the warrior's code — one should know the name of the man one fights — and here that kṣatriya custom appears even in a demon. Rāma, in his great splendour, answered the rākṣasa with the blazing face who was asking after his lineage, the house of Ikṣvāku: ‘Know that we are two kṣatriyas of good conduct, now living in the forest. But we wish to know about you: who are you, that you roam the Daṇḍaka lands?’ There is neither pride nor fear in his answer; he names only his birth and his conduct, and by saying they now ranged the forest he does not hide his present condition either.

Then Virādha said to Rāma, whose valour never failed: ‘Very well, I shall tell you, king; learn about me, Rāghava. I am the son of Java, they say, and my mother is Śatahradā; all the rākṣasas on earth call me Virādha. By my austerities I won from Brahmā's favour this: no weapon can kill me, and in this world I can be neither cut nor pierced.’ This announcement of the boon is the key to what follows: since no weapon could kill him, in the end he would have to be killed by burial in the earth. ‘Let this young woman go and hurry back the way you came, without a backward look; I will not take your lives,’ he concluded. Proud of his boon, the rākṣasa seemed to show mercy, yet he would not let Sītā go, and there lay the falsehood in his words. With the little word ‘they say’ the poet seems to hint that even his father's name was uncertain, and his mother's name, Śatahradā, is a word for lightning, suggesting how fearful his birth was. The boon has three parts — no weapon can kill him, he cannot be cut, he cannot be pierced — and none of them prevents burial in the ground, so the boon itself leaves open the door to his death. In the previous sarga he was proud of his strength; in this one he is proud of his boon.

His eyes red with rage, Rāma answered that misshapen, evil-minded rākṣasa: ‘Wretch, shame on you! Your purpose is base, and surely you are looking for death — in battle you shall find it. Stand your ground; you will not get out of my hands alive.’ Then he strung his bow, swiftly fitted keen-edged arrows to it, and struck the rākṣasa. From that taut-stringed bow he loosed seven gold-nocked arrows of tremendous speed, flying like Garuḍa and like the wind; they were feathered with peacock plumes, and after piercing Virādha's body they fell to the ground smeared with blood, like flames. Wounded, the rākṣasa set Vaidehī down, raised his pike and rushed in fury at Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa. Sītā's release was the first fruit of the fight; from here on it was between the brothers and Virādha alone. Rāma's words are short and sharp — calling him ‘wretch’ says all he thought of him, and ‘your purpose is base’ implies that a base desire would meet a base end. Volleys of seven arrows appear often in the Rāmāyaṇa, and the double comparison with Garuḍa and the wind doubles their speed. The arrows are likened to fire because, smeared with blood, they glowed like tongues of flame. Yet those bloodied arrows lying on the ground were the first sign that he was not dying: his body was pierced but his life held. And Sītā had only been set down, not freed; her fear was not yet over.

Roaring a mighty roar and holding up his pike like Indra's standard, he looked like Death with jaws agape. The two brothers rained a blazing shower of arrows on the rākṣasa, who was like Time, Death and Yama in one. But that most terrible rākṣasa only laughed, stood his ground, and stretched himself, and as he stretched the swift arrows fell out of his body — by the power of his boon his flesh would not hold a weapon. The image is vivid: like a man waking from sleep and stretching his limbs, he shook the arrows off with a movement of his body, as though the fight were a game to him. Holding back his life by the touch of his boon, the rākṣasa raised his pike and rushed at the two Rāghavas. That pike, like the thunderbolt, blazing in the sky like fire, Rāma, best of those who bear arms, cut through with two arrows; it fell to the ground like a slab of rock from Meru split by lightning. Indra's standard is huge and tall, so the first comparison conveys the size of the pike, and the rock of Meru its weight. Then the brothers quickly raised their swords, poised like black serpents, and fell upon him at once, striking with all their strength. In this passage the poet shows three weapons in turn — arrows, pike, swords — and each proves useless, because the boon stands. The reader is left asking how such a creature can be killed at all; the answer comes in the fourth sarga, and the next passage shows that even the swords failed.

Though they struck him again and again, that fierce creature seized the two unshakable tigers among men in his arms and meant to make off with them. Understanding his intention, Rāma said to Lakṣmaṇa: ‘Let this rākṣasa carry us along his path for now. Let him carry us where he likes, Saumitri; the road the night-ranger takes is our road too.’ Rāma's calm is astonishing: even when mounted on an enemy's shoulders he was not flustered, but treated the demon's course as his own way. Then the night-ranger, swollen with pride in his strength, hoisted them up and set them on his shoulders as though they were children, and with the two Rāghavas on his back Virādha went off towards the forest, roaring horribly. He entered a forest dark as a great bank of cloud, thick with huge trees of many kinds, made wonderful by flocks of birds of every sort, full of jackals and overrun with beasts of prey. So the sarga ends with the fight undecided. Carried like children, the two whom everyone feared looked like infants on his shoulders, a measure of his vast strength. But Rāma's instruction holds the seed of victory, for the rākṣasa himself was taking them into the depths of the forest where the pit would be. The forest is given four marks: dark as cloud and crowded with trees, which speak of its depth, and teeming with birds and with prowling beasts, which together speak of danger.