रामेण खरवधः

In the last sarga Rāma's arrows had shattered in mid-air the great mace Khara hurled at him. Now Rāghava, devoted to dharma, began to speak, smiling yet heated; the poet shows smile and anger together in him. "Basest of rākṣasas, that was the whole sum of your strength, and now it has been shown. You are far weaker than I, and your roaring was for nothing. There lies your mace on the ground, split by my arrows, and it is the very thing that has destroyed the confidence of a man so bold with his tongue." What Khara had trusted in, that is, had itself killed his trust. Then Rāma threw Khara's own promise back at him: "You said you would wipe away the tears of the rākṣasas who have perished. That claim too has proved false." And he answered with a vow of his own: "I shall take the life of a rākṣasa so low, so mean in nature, so false in conduct, as Garuḍa carried off the nectar of immortality." The image of Garuḍa conveys both how hard the feat was and how certain. The word "smiling" deserves thought: angry though he was, Rāma's first response was mirth, because his enemy's pride had been broken by his own weapon. In the last sarga Khara had roared that with his mace he was enough for anyone; now that mace lay on the ground, and Rāma had nothing new to say. He simply pointed at what lay before them.

In seven verses Rāma painted Khara's coming fate. "Today, when my arrows have torn you open and split your throat, the earth will drink your blood, flecked with foam and bubbles." Then the picture of him lying there: "Every limb covered in dust, both arms slack and flung wide, you will sleep with the earth in your embrace, as though she were a woman hard to win." The image is sharp: the one who lusted after others' women would end by embracing only the ground. Then what would follow: "When you, the disgrace of the rākṣasas, lie in that long sleep, these Daṇḍaka woods will be a refuge for those who give refuge. Once my arrows have destroyed your seat at Janasthāna, the sages will roam this forest everywhere without fear." Here it is plain that the purpose of the battle is to lift the ascetics' fear. Then the rākṣasa women: "Today the rākṣasīs, their kinsmen slain, their faces wet with tears, wretched now though once they terrified others, will scatter in fear. Today the wives who had a husband such as you, well matched in birth, will learn the taste of grief and be left with nothing." Last he named the root of it: "Cruel by nature, base of soul, forever a thorn to brāhmaṇas, it is because of you that the sages pour their offerings into the fire in dread." That sacrifice itself had been gripped by fear was Khara's great crime. The order of the seven verses is deliberate: first Khara's body, then the earth, then the forest, then the women, and last the sacrifice, so that the consequences widen from one person to the whole world. The repetition in "a refuge for those who give refuge" is lovely: the ascetics, who themselves shelter others, would now find shelter in the forest.

Seeing Rāghava speak to him so hotly there in the forest, Khara shouted him down, his voice made harsher still by rage; the poet plays on his name, for "khara" itself means harsh. "You are very sure of yourself, fearless even where there is cause for fear; being in death's grip, you no longer know what should and should not be said. Men caught in the noose of Time lose the use of all six senses and cannot tell what ought to be done from what ought not." The irony is plain. Everything Khara said to Rāma fits Khara himself exactly: it was he who was bound by Time's noose, he who had lost the sense to tell right action from wrong. This is Vālmīki's way, letting a character's own words mirror his condition. The taunt that Rāma did not know what to say was Khara's last speech; after it he said nothing more and answered only with deeds. In the last sarga he had spoken at length, but here his words are cut short, three verses in all, because time was running out.

With that, Khara scowled at Rāma, then caught sight of a great sāla tree close by. The poet says he looked all round for a weapon for the fight: without a chariot and with his mace shattered he had no weapon left, and the forest itself became his armoury. Biting his lip, a sign of strain as well as of rage, he tore the tree up by its roots. Lifting it in both arms, the mighty rākṣasa bellowed and hurled it at Rāma, crying, "You are a dead man!" His words proclaimed victory before the deed was done, as is the rākṣasa way. But the valiant Rāma cut the tree apart with showers of arrows as it came flying at him, and summoned up a fierce anger to kill Khara in battle. The poet says he "summoned" his anger, suggesting that it was not his nature but something taken up for the task at hand. Note too the order of Khara's weapons, first the mace, then a tree: the fall from a real weapon to a makeshift one shows his strength ebbing, while Rāma's single bow served him to the very end.

Now the poet describes Rāma himself. Sweat broke out on him and the corners of his eyes were red with anger as he pierced Khara in the battle with a thousand arrows. Sweat and reddened eyes are rarely seen in Rāma, and they show how fierce the fight had become. Out of the gaps between the arrows much frothing blood poured from Khara, like torrents running from a mountain spring. The mountain image returns, but now it no longer shows Khara's firmness; it shows the flood of blood from his wounds. Though Rāma's arrows had crippled him, Khara, maddened by the smell of blood, rushed straight at him, for to a rākṣasa the smell of blood brings frenzy, not fear. Then we see the skill of Rāma, master of weapons: as the enraged and blood-soaked Khara came on, he quickened his step a little and moved back two or three paces. A bow cannot be used at close quarters, and so he drew back a little; this was not retreat but the rule of the archer's art. The epithet "skilled in weapons" itself explains the move, for one who has mastered arms weighs place and moment too. In these four verses Rāma's anger shows in his body for the first time, yet there is no rashness in what he does, and that is the mark of the hero who is both steadfast and noble.

Now came the decisive moment. To kill Khara, Rāma took up an arrow like fire itself, like a second rod of Brahmā. It had been given to him by the wise Maghavan, Indra, king of the gods, and the righteous Rāma fitted it to his bow and loosed it at Khara. By naming Indra as its source the poet shows that this was no mere fight between two men but a battle between the side of the gods and the side of the rākṣasas. Loosed from the fully drawn bow, the great arrow, with a sound like a thunderclap, struck Khara in the chest. Burned by the fire of that arrow, Khara fell to the ground, as Andhaka fell when Rudra burned him in the Śveta forest. Then the poet sets three comparisons side by side: Khara fell dead like Vṛtra struck by the thunderbolt, like Namuci struck by the foam, like Bala struck by Indra's bolt. All three were mighty asuras and all three were slain by Indra, so Khara's death takes its place in the long line of the wars between gods and asuras. In these five verses no one speaks a word; there is only the arrow taken up, fitted, loosed, and falling. The end of the battle is told in silence.

At that very moment the gods came together with the cāraṇas, beating their drums and showering flowers on Rāma from every side. They were delighted and amazed, for in little more than half a muhūrta, the space of barely two ghaṭikās, Rāma with his sharp arrows had slain in that great battle fourteen thousand rākṣasas who could change their shape at will, with Khara and Dūṣaṇa at their head. The mention of time matters greatly here: it is the number together with the speed that fills the gods with wonder. They cried, "How wonderful is this great deed of Rāma, who knows his own self! How wonderful his valour, how wonderful his firmness; it is as though we were seeing Viṣṇu!" The epithet "who knows his own self" is subtle: such a deed is possible only for one who knows his true nature. With the words "as though Viṣṇu" the poet hints that Rāma is Viṣṇu without saying so outright, and that restraint is Vālmīki's way. Note too that the gods do not so much praise Rāma as marvel at him, and here wonder is a stronger witness than praise. The beating of their drums shows their excitement, and their rain of flowers their gratitude.

Having spoken, all the gods went back the way they had come. Then the royal seers and the great seers gathered, and with Agastya among them came joyfully to honour Rāma. "It was for this," they said, "that the mighty Mahendra, Indra, chastiser of Pāka, destroyer of cities, came to Śarabhaṅga's holy hermitage. It was for this that the great seers found a way to bring you to this region: to kill these enemies, the rākṣasas of evil deeds. Son of Daśaratha, you have done this work of ours, and now the great seers will be free to follow their own dharma in the Daṇḍaka forest." With these words Indra's visit and the episode of Śarabhaṅga, told in earlier sargas, are strung on a single thread: what was a mystery then is now revealed. Meanwhile the heroic Lakṣmaṇa came out of the mountain cave with Sītā and, at ease again, entered the hermitage. Here the poet turns our eyes from the battlefield to the hermitage, and so suggests that even in the thick of the fight Sītā's safety had been Rāma's first concern.

Then the victorious Rāma, honoured by the great seers and saluted by Lakṣmaṇa, entered the hermitage. Seeing him, the slayer of his enemies who had brought ease to the great seers, Vaidehī was overjoyed and embraced her husband. Filled with the deepest delight, seeing the hordes of rākṣasas slain and Rāma himself unharmed, she was content; her joy had two causes, the destruction of the enemy and the safety of her beloved. The sarga closes in a longer, stately metre: as the great-souled seers honoured him in their gladness, Janaka's daughter embraced once more that crusher of the rākṣasa hosts, and her face shone with happiness. "Embraced once more" tells us that one embrace could not contain her joy. So what had been filled with battle for two sargas comes to rest at last in Sītā's embrace, and the poet leads us from terror and fury into peace. The word used for Rāma, "unharmed", can also mean imperishable, but in Sītā's eyes it was the first sense that mattered: he had come back to her whole.