मारीचेन रावणस्य प्रतिबोधनम्

Hearing what the lord of the rākṣasas said about carrying off Sītā, Mārīca, of great lustre and skilled in speech, began his reply. He did not refuse outright; first he laid down a maxim of good policy. "People who always say what is pleasant are easy to find everywhere, O king; but one who speaks what is unpleasant yet wholesome, and one who will listen to it, are both hard to come by." With this he prepared the ground for the bitter but beneficial words to come, as if to say: I shall not tell you what you want to hear, only what is good for you, so be ready to listen. By naming both the rare speaker and the rare listener, he hinted in advance at the dispute that lay ahead.

Mārīca laid bare Rāvaṇa's root fault. "You set no proper spies and your mind is restless, and so you surely do not know Rāma, who stands high in valour and in every virtue, the equal of great Indra and of Varuṇa." Ignorance, he meant, is the source of all the trouble. Then he voiced his fears in a string of anxious hopes. "May all the rākṣasas be safe, my friend; may Rāma in his fury not empty the worlds of rākṣasas. Can it be that Janaka's daughter was born to end your life? Can it be that some great disaster will come about because of Sītā? With you for its lord, self-willed and beyond all restraint, may the city of Laṅkā not perish, and the rākṣasas with you." In form these are wishes; in meaning they are prophecies. At the last he stated a general rule: "A king like you, self-willed, of bad character, badly advised and of evil judgement, destroys not only himself but his own people and his whole realm." So one king's fault would end in the ruin of all the rākṣasas.

Then Mārīca took apart, one by one, Rāvaṇa's false ideas about Rāma. In the last sarga Rāvaṇa had called Rāma a disgrace to the kṣatriyas, cruel, greedy and the slave of his senses, and Mārīca denied every word of it. "Rāma was not cast off by his father, nor is he lawless in any way; he is not greedy, not ill-behaved, not a disgrace to the kṣatriya line. He does not lack the virtues of dharma, he who brings joy to Kausalyā; he is not harsh to living beings but always devoted to their good." He made clear the real reason Rāma went to the forest: "Seeing that his father, a man of truth, had been tricked by Kaikeyī, that righteous man resolved, 'I shall make him true to his word,' and went into the forest of his own accord. To do what pleased Kaikeyī and his father Daśaratha, he gave up kingdom and pleasures and entered the Daṇḍaka forest." He had been neither banished nor defeated. "So Rāma is not harsh, my friend, not ignorant, not a slave to his senses; no one has ever heard a lie from him, and you have no right to speak of him so." And at the last Mārīca rose to the highest praise: "Rāma is dharma itself in bodily form. He is good, his valour is truth, and he is king of the whole world as Indra is king of the gods." So his description begins with denial and ends with affirmation: first a long run of "he is not", then four things he is, dharma, good, true in valour, king. Rāvaṇa thought Rāma weak; Mārīca saw him as dharma embodied, and that is the root of the difference between them.

Then Mārīca showed that carrying off Sītā was impossible. "How can you wish to seize Vaidehī by force, when she is guarded by her own splendour, like the radiance of the sun?" As light cannot be parted from the sun, so Sītā cannot be parted from Rāma. Then he offered his famous image of fire: "Rāma is a blazing fire whose flames are his arrows and whose fuel is his bow and sword. That fire cannot be withstood, and you must not rush into it in battle." He widened the image: "His drawn bow is its blazing open mouth, his arrows its flames; he is by nature unforgiving, he bears bow and arrows, he is fierce and sweeps away the armies of his foes. Do not, my friend, throw away your kingdom, your comforts and your dear life by going too near to Rāma, who is Death himself." At the last he gave his reason: "The might of the man whose wife is Janaka's daughter is beyond measure. You cannot carry her off in the forest, sheltered as she is by Rāma's bow." His principle is that a wife is guarded not by walls or armies but by her husband's power.

Next Mārīca described Sītā's greatness. "She is the proud wife of that lion among men, that lion-chested hero, dearer to him than life and always devoted to him"; the suggestion is that her husband's love itself protects her. "No one can lay a hand on Maithilī, the beloved of that mighty man; slender-waisted Sītā is like the flame of a blazing fire", with the hidden meaning that whoever tried to touch her would be burned. Then he asked directly, "What will you gain, king of the rākṣasas, by this futile venture? Be sure of this: the day he sees you in battle is the last day of your life." And he closed with affection: "If you want to enjoy for long your life, your comforts and a kingdom so hard to win, then do nothing to offend Rāma."

At the last Mārīca, not in anger but like a well-wishing minister, set out the proper course. "Take counsel with all your righteous ministers, with Vibhīṣaṇa at their head. Make up your own mind, weigh carefully the strength and weakness of the faults and the merits, learn truly your own strength and Rāghava's, decide what is really for your good, and then do only what you are able to do." So he laid out the whole order of right statecraft. And he gave his own view plainly: "For my part, I think a meeting in battle with the son of the king of Kosala is beyond you." Then he asked once more for a hearing: "Listen again, lord of the night-rovers, to a further word, an excellent one, fitting and proper." With this the sarga ends, and in the next Mārīca begins to tell his own story.