खरेण चतुर्दशराक्षसप्रेषणम्

At the end of the previous sarga Śūrpaṇakhā fell to the ground before Khara in Janasthāna. Now, seeing her lying there disfigured and drenched in blood, the rākṣasa, burning with anger, questioned her: ‘Get up and tell me; shake off this swoon and this panic. Say plainly who has disfigured you like this.’ He did not first comfort her in her faint but demanded the news — such is the haste of anger. Then with two images he described the daring of the man who had done it: ‘Who is it that idly prods with his fingertip a venomous black serpent lying harmless and quiet before him? Who has hung the noose of Death about his own neck without knowing it in his folly, attacking you today and swallowing the deadliest poison?’ Both images are apt, for Śūrpaṇakhā herself is the poison here, her touch meant for death. Then he voiced his amazement: ‘You are full of strength and valour, you go where you please and take any shape you wish; you are like Death himself. Who has brought you to this? Among the gods, the gandharvas, the spirits and the great sages, who is so mighty that he could disfigure you?’ His sister's very power is the cause of his surprise: she whom no one could defeat had been defeated. At the very start of the sarga the poet fixes Khara's nature in two marks, anger and pride, and these will be the causes of his destruction. And though he runs through the whole world in his mind — gods, gandharvas, spirits, seers — he never touches the truth, for the one who disfigured her was no god or gandharva but a man. That is where the irony begins.

Then Khara boasted of his own might: ‘I see no one in the world who could do me such an injury, except perhaps thousand-eyed Indra, chastiser of Pāka, among the immortals. Today, with arrows that end life, I will take his life, as the sārasa bird drinks the milk out of milk mixed with water.’ The image is a charming one — just as the bird takes only the milk from the mixture, so he would draw out only the life from the body. Then two questions reveal his fury: ‘Whose frothing blood does the earth long to drink, when he lies slain by me in battle, his vitals cut through by my arrows? Whose body will the birds flock to and joyfully devour, tearing off the flesh, when I have killed him in combat?’ These questions are really vows: death is certain, only the name is unknown. ‘Once I have dragged that wretch down in the great battle,’ he proclaimed, ‘no god, no gandharva, no piśāca and no rākṣasa will be able to save him.’ At last he said to his sister: ‘Come to your senses slowly, and then tell me who it was — what insolent creature overpowered you in the forest and beat you.’ After four verses of boasting he still does not know his enemy's name, and so the poet hints at the emptiness of his pride. Yet ‘come to your senses slowly’ shows a little of a brother's affection; even in his rage he remembers her faint, though comfort is not his chief concern — revenge is. So this passage completes Khara's character: strong, wrathful, proud, and fond of his sister.

Hearing these words of her furious brother, Śūrpaṇakhā answered with tears in her eyes, and her account touched three people in turn. First the two men: ‘There are two young men, handsome, delicate and very strong, with eyes wide as white lotuses, dressed in bark and black antelope skin. They live on fruit and roots, self-controlled, ascetics and celibates — the sons of Daśaratha, the brothers Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa.’ Here again a contradiction appears within a single pair: very strong, yet ascetics. It is a warning of danger for Khara, which he fails to heed; the poet subtly shows that though the brothers were at once ascetics and bearers of arms, Khara took no account of it — pride stops even the ears. ‘They are like the king of the gandharvas and bear the marks of royalty; I cannot even guess whether they are gods or dānavas.’ Then the third figure: ‘And between them I saw a young woman, beautiful, slender-waisted, adorned with every ornament.’ Sītā is mentioned only briefly here, yet she will become the centre of the whole story. Finally she blamed that woman for her plight: ‘Because of that woman the two of them together brought me to this state, as if I were some helpless, unchaste creature. I long to drink the frothing blood of that crooked woman and of those two, slain on the field of battle.’ In fact it was she who was crooked, and her laying of the blame reveals her own nature. A great deceit lies hidden here too: she concealed entirely her own advances and her attempt to devour Sītā, and told only of her disfigurement. A half-truth becomes the seed of war; had she told everything, Khara might perhaps have held back.

She pressed him again: ‘This is my first and foremost wish, and you must fulfil it for me there: let me drink her blood and theirs in battle.’ As she said this, the enraged Khara ordered out fourteen mighty rākṣasas, each like Death himself. This is the first dispatch of troops, and the number fourteen will be answered by Rāma with fourteen arrows. Khara's orders were plain: ‘Two men armed with weapons, dressed in bark and black antelope skin, have entered the dread Daṇḍaka forest with a young woman. Kill them both, and that wicked woman too, and come back; this sister of mine will drink their blood. This, rākṣasas, is my sister's dearest wish. Go and crush them by your own might and accomplish it quickly. When she sees the two brothers struck down by you in battle, she will rejoice and gladly drink their blood on the field.’ His sister's pleasure is the only reason for the command — not dharma, not justice — and this shows the nature of the rākṣasas' rule. So instructed, the fourteen rākṣasas went there with her, like clouds driven before the wind. The image carries two meanings: on one side their dark colour and speed, on the other their lack of will, for like clouds driven by the wind they were carried along by another's wish, and went to their own destruction. The design of the sarga is worth noting: at the start the sister's fall and Khara's anger, in the middle his boasts, and at the end the order and the march, so that the feeling mounts steadily into the battle of the next sarga. The word ‘blood’ recurs again and again in both Khara's and Śūrpaṇakhā's speeches, and with that one word the poet holds the fierce mood of the rākṣasa world.