खरसेनाप्रयाणे महोत्पाताः

Khara's army, made ready in the previous sarga, now sets out, and at that very moment ill omens begin. The host that marched was dreadful and inauspicious — a word that announces the outcome at the very start — and above it a great tumultuous cloud, grey as a donkey, rained down water of blood; a rain of blood is a well-known sign of an army's destruction in the old poems. Then the swift horses yoked to Khara's chariot stumbled and fell for no reason on the level, flower-strewn royal road; the point is that they fell where there was nothing to stumble on. A halo appeared around the sun's disc, dark and rimmed with blood, like the circle traced by a whirling firebrand. Then a huge and most dreadful vulture came and settled on the tall banner with its golden staff, gripping it fast; the banner is the sign of victory, and by having the bird of death perch on it the poet points to the army's fate. And near Janasthāna the harsh-voiced beasts and birds that eat flesh gathered and set up all kinds of discordant cries. Notice the order of the portents: first rain from the sky, then the horses stumbling on the ground, then the halo in the sky again, then the vulture on the banner, and finally the cries of beasts and birds on the earth. So the poet moves our gaze up and down and fills the whole scene with dread. The ancient treatises count portents of three kinds — of heaven, of the middle air and of the earth — and here examples of all three appear together. Yet Khara's army, seeing all this, did not stop.

In the blazing quarter the dreadful, loud-voiced she-jackals howled a terrifying cry that boded ill for the rākṣasas. Fearsome rainclouds like elephants in rut, carrying water and blood, covered the sky so completely that there seemed to be no sky at all. A thick, hair-raising darkness came on, and neither the quarters nor the directions between them could be clearly seen. A glow the colour of cloth soaked in blood appeared, though it was not the hour of twilight, and dreadful beasts and birds cried out facing Khara. Herons, jackals and vultures screeched, announcing danger, and the she-jackals, always bringers of ill in war and terrible to see, howled at the army with flames pouring from their mouths — the height of poetic fancy, for beasts do not breathe fire, but in a time of portents anything can happen. A headless trunk like an iron bar was seen close to the sun, a sign held to foretell great terror. The great planet Svarbhānu seized the sun though it was not the day of an eclipse; the wind blew hard and the sun lost its light. An eclipse comes only at the conjunction, so an eclipse at any other time means the very order of nature has broken. So the poet does not merely describe frightful sights; he shows the law of the cosmos itself overturned. And again and again he says that all these boded ill for the rākṣasas in particular.

Stars rose though it was not night, glimmering like fireflies; in the lotus pools the fish and birds hid themselves and the lotuses closed. At that same moment the trees stood bare of flowers and fruit, and dust red as a raincloud rose though there was no wind. The mynah birds kept up a shrill ‘cīcī, kūcī’, for even a strange cry of birds counts among the portents; meteors fell with a roar, terrible to see; and the earth itself shook with its mountains, woods and forests. So a disturbance is shown in all five elements: the earth quakes, dust rises without wind, fire loses its light, the waters turn to blood, and the sky is shrouded in darkness. The word ‘without’ recurs — stars without night, trees without fruit and flower, dust without wind, a glow without twilight — and the repetition is no fault but design, showing each thing cut off from its natural cause, which is the breaking of cause and effect itself. At last the omens settled on Khara's own body: as that clever one stood roaring in his chariot, his left arm trembled, his voice failed him, and as he looked all around his eyes filled with tears. This movement from outward signs to signs in the body is the poet's craft; the tradition counts such things, the trembling of the left side and the like, as warnings of misfortune to a man. And to call him ‘clever’ here is ironic: a clever man would have turned back on seeing such signs, but he did not.

A pain rose in his forehead too, yet in his delusion he did not turn back — the word makes clear that this was not courage but ignorance. Seeing those great, hair-raising portents, Khara laughed and said to all the rākṣasas: ‘All these great portents, dreadful as they look, I take no account of, so great is my strength, as a strong man takes no account of the weak. With my sharp arrows I could bring the very stars down from the sky; in my fury I could make Death himself subject to death. Until I have killed with my sharp arrows Rāghava, swollen with strength, and his brother Lakṣmaṇa, I have no wish to turn back.’ His boast rises in three steps: first he dismisses the portents, then vows to bring down the stars, and at last to kill Death himself. That last is the height of a rākṣasa's arrogance, and the very exaggeration foretells his ruin, for one who talks of conquering Death stands close beside it. His laughing is especially telling — laughter in place of fear, pride in place of judgement. His words were the fruit of the anger kindled earlier by Śūrpaṇakhā's scorn. Vālmīki does not make the enemy contemptible; by showing him hugely proud he makes Rāma's victory greater.

He went on: ‘Let my sister, for whose sake the ruin of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa has come, have her wish and drink their blood. Never yet have I been defeated in any battle — you have seen it for yourselves; I tell no lie. In my anger I would kill in battle even the king of the gods, thunderbolt in hand, riding his rutting Airāvata — how much more these two men!’ Hearing that roar, the great rākṣasa army, already caught in the noose of death, felt a joy beyond compare; by that contrast — rejoicing while bound for death — the poet shows their folly, and a grim pathos, since those who rejoiced were welcoming their own deaths. Then, eager to watch the battle, there gathered the great-souled seers, gods and gandharvas, siddhas and cāraṇas, and meeting there, those doers of holy deeds said to one another: ‘May it be well with the cows and the brāhmaṇas and with all who are honoured in the worlds. As Viṣṇu with the discus in his hand conquered all the foremost asuras, so may Rāghava conquer these Paulastya night-rangers in battle.’ Saying this and much more, the great seers and the gods standing in their aerial cars, full of curiosity, looked upon the army of those rākṣasas whose lives were already spent — with that single word the poet announces the battle's outcome in advance. Here he turns our view from the rākṣasas' side to the side of the gods. The blessings of seers and gods before the battle are a familiar pattern of the Rāmāyaṇa, and they leave the reader in no doubt which side holds dharma; ‘may it be well with the cows and the brāhmaṇas’ names the purpose of slaying the rākṣasas — the protection of sacrifice and of dharma. And the comparison of Rāma with Viṣṇu conquering the asuras plainly hints that Rāma is Viṣṇu's incarnation.

Khara in his chariot sped out from the head of his army. Around him went twelve rākṣasas of great might — Śyenagāmī, Pṛthugrīva, Yajñaśatru, Vihaṃgama, Durjaya, Karavīrākṣa, Paruṣa, Kālakārmuka, Hemamālī, Mahāmālī, Sarpāsya and Rudhirāśana — while four others, Mahākapāla, Sthūlākṣa, Pramātha and Triśiras, at the front of the army, followed behind Dūṣaṇa. So the order of battle is hinted at too, with Khara in front and Dūṣaṇa, the commander, behind. These names are not a mere list: many of these warriors will be killed by Rāma in the sargas that follow, so the poet introduces them in advance, and they become the threads of the coming story. Then that army of rākṣasa heroes, fearfully swift, hungry for battle and utterly merciless, suddenly came upon the two princes, as a garland of planets closes around the moon and the sun. The image is subtle: the planets surround the moon and sun but do not swallow them, and so this army would encircle Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa without being able to overcome them; it also recalls the portents among the planets told earlier. So this sarga, which began with omens, ends with the army drawing near the hermitage, and in the next Rāma sees those same omens.