शूर्पणखायाः लङ्कागमनं रावणदर्शनं च

This sarga takes up the thread again from the thirty-first, but with a different messenger. Śūrpaṇakhā saw with her own eyes that fourteen thousand rākṣasas of terrible deeds had been slain by Rāma alone, and that Dūṣaṇa, Khara and Triśiras had fallen in battle. At the sight she raised great cries again, like a thundering rain-cloud; the image conveys how deep and far-reaching her wail was, and "again" recalls the cry she had given when she was mutilated. She looked on that deed of Rāma's, which others could scarcely have done, that is, which no one else could have done. So the poet suggests that her grief was not only for her slaughtered kin but mixed with astonishment: she knew this was no ordinary enemy. In the utmost agitation she went to Laṅkā, the city Rāvaṇa protected. That description is pointed: she sought protection in the city Rāvaṇa guarded, though in truth she came not to be protected but to demand revenge. In three verses the poet crosses the long road from Janasthāna to Laṅkā, because the purpose of this sarga is not the journey but the sight of Rāvaṇa.

Reaching Laṅkā, she saw Rāvaṇa on the upper deck of his flying palace, blazing with splendour, seated among his counsellors like Indra among the Maruts. The comparison to Indra works two ways: it shows his majesty, and it shows the enmity, for the one who sat there like Indra was Indra's foe. He sat on a superb golden throne bright as the sun, and he shone like a great fire blazing on an altar of gold, fed with offerings; the fire too carries a double sense, splendour and the power to burn. Then the poet tells of his invincibility: he was unconquerable in battle and terrible to gods, gandharvas, spirits and great-souled seers, like Death with his jaws agape. Last come the marks on his body: in the wars of gods and asuras he had been scarred by thunderbolt and lightning, and his chest was ridged with the marks gouged by the tips of Airāvata's tusks. These wounds and scars are not signs of weakness but the records of past victories. Note that Śūrpaṇakhā does not speak to Rāvaṇa at first: the poet shows him through her eyes, so that the reader too may feel her awe and her fear.

Now the poet describes his form directly. He had twenty arms and ten necks, splendid trappings, a broad chest; he was a hero marked with all the signs of royalty. The number of his arms and necks reveals that he was more than human, and the royal marks that he was a king. His body gleamed like set lapis and his ornaments were of refined gold; he was strong-armed, white-toothed, wide-mouthed, huge as a mountain, the same mountain image the poet used for Khara earlier in this kāṇḍa. Then his scars again: in the war with the gods he had been struck hundreds of times by the fall of Viṣṇu's discus, and by other weapons and blows in great battles, yet not one of his limbs had been broken by all the weapons of the gods. The blows were many, but no limb was destroyed. Last, his power: he troubled even the oceans that none can trouble, and acted in an instant. The one who could stir up the seas would, by carrying off Sītā, stir up ruin for his own race. And the words "unbroken by all the weapons of the gods" carry the irony of his boon: what the gods could not do, a man would do.

In six verses the poet recounts Rāvaṇa's past, stringing the phrases together one after another, each beginning "he who". He hurled mountain peaks, crushed the gods, uprooted righteousness and laid hands on other men's wives; he wielded every divine weapon and was forever spoiling sacrifices. The phrase about other men's wives deserves special notice: the very fault that will bring about his ruin is named here as an old trait of his. Then his conquests. He went to the serpent city of Bhogavatī, defeated Vāsuki, defeated Takṣaka and carried off his beloved wife. He went to Mount Kailāsa, conquered Kubera, the god whose mounts are men, and carried off his flying palace Puṣpaka, which goes wherever its master wishes. In his anger he laid waste the heavenly Caitraratha wood, the Nalinī lake, the Nandana grove and the pleasure-gardens of the gods. Tall as a mountain peak, he held back with his arms the illustrious sun and moon, scorchers of the foe, as they rose. The world of serpents, the lord of wealth, the gardens of the gods, the heavenly lights: his assaults reached four levels of creation, and no world was left untouched. The poet uses no main verb in all these verses, only descriptions of the one who was seen, and the sentence is completed several verses later with "she saw".

Now the story of his boon. Long ago, in the great forest, he performed austerities for ten thousand years and, steadfast, offered his own heads to the Self-existent Brahmā; the offering of his heads shows how fierce and how strange his penance was. Its fruit was that in battle he had nothing to fear from gods, dānavas, gandharvas, piśācas, birds or serpents; only from a human being. Here lies the hidden thread of the whole Rāmāyaṇa: humans were left out of the boon, and so Viṣṇu came down in human form. Then his evil deeds again. At sacrifices he destroyed in the soma-carts the holy soma that the twice-born had hymned with mantras; he carried off sacrifices at the very point of completion; he was wicked, a slayer of brāhmaṇas, cruel in act, harsh, without pity, forever bent on harming living beings; he was Rāvaṇa, the terror of all creatures and of all the worlds. Stealing the soma is chief among his sins, because it robs the gods of their share. So in four verses the boon and the sin are set side by side, with the suggestion that the boon itself emboldened him to sin. The two words "only from a human" set the course of the whole poem, and Rāvaṇa disregarded them, for in his eyes a man was no more than a blade of grass.

Now the sentence is completed: such was the cruel and mighty brother whom the rākṣasī saw. A net of descriptions spread over sixteen verses closes with a single verb, a well-known habit of Vālmīki's. She saw him clothed in heavenly garments and ornaments, bright with heavenly garlands, seated at ease on his throne like Death poised at the end of time, the illustrious lord of the rākṣasas, the joy of Pulastya's line. The image is terrifying: his likeness is Time itself, risen to destroy the world at the great dissolution. Then she approached. Coming up to Rāvaṇa, slayer of his foes, surrounded by his ministers, the rākṣasī, shaken with fear, spoke. The word "shaken with fear" is worth dwelling on: she who had been a terror to others was now herself overcome by terror. The last verse, in a longer metre, says that Śūrpaṇakhā, who had gone about unafraid and had been disfigured by the great-souled Lakṣmaṇa, now bewildered by fear and by greed, showed him her mutilation and spoke dreadful words to him of the blazing, wide-set eyes. By saying that she showed herself first, the poet makes the sight itself her proof before any word is spoken; the words themselves we shall hear in the next sarga. So this sarga ends on a sight, with the speech still to come, and that pause heightens our eagerness for the story.