जटायुरावणयोः घोरं युद्धम्

At Jaṭāyus's words the lord of the rākṣasas, his eyes copper-red with rage and his golden earrings blazing, rushed furiously at the king of birds. In that great battle there was a tumultuous clash between the two, like two clouds driven together by the wind in the sky. The fight between the vulture and the rākṣasa was a wonder to see, as if two winged Mālyavat mountains had met; winged mountains are a familiar image from the old legends. Rāvaṇa rained on the mighty vulture king a terrible shower of arrows, hollow shafts, iron shafts and sharp barbed ones. But Jaṭāyus, lord of the winged creatures, took those nets of arrows and Rāvaṇa's missiles in the fight without fear or retreat. Then that mighty best of birds tore many wounds in Rāvaṇa's body with his sharp-taloned feet. In the last sarga there were calm words; here the blows come suddenly, for when conciliation fails, only force remains. "A tumultuous clash" shows that the battle was fierce from the start, and the clouds clashing convey both its noise and its terror. The fight began because of Jaṭāyus's final words: angered by words, Rāvaṇa was driven by words into battle. Jaṭāyus's weapons are not made weapons but talons, wings and beak, his own nature; Rāvaṇa's are bow, arrows, chariot and armour, all things made. So the poet suggests that the side of dharma fights with its own nature, the side of adharma with equipment. The word "took" is worth noting: he did not ward off the arrows but received them; his old body was pierced, but his resolve did not move. The clouds and the winged mountains at the outset both speak of greatness, so that the reader sees Jaṭāyus as Rāvaṇa's equal. The gracious words of the last sarga and the charge here form the hinge that turns the story. And the first blood drawn is Rāvaṇa's: the old bird wins the first blow.

Then in fury Daśagrīva, wanting his enemy dead, took up ten dreadful arrows like the rods of Death, and with those shafts, drawn to the full and flying straight, sharp, whetted and terrible, the mighty hero pierced the vulture. But Jaṭāyus, seeing Jānakī in the rākṣasa's chariot with her eyes full of tears, took no notice of the arrows and flew straight at the rākṣasa; the sight of Sītā made him forget his pain. With his feet that best of birds broke Rāvaṇa's bow, set with pearls and gems, with the arrow still on it. Beside himself with rage, Rāvaṇa took another bow and poured out arrows by the hundred and the thousand. Hemmed in by the arrows, the lord of birds looked like a bird come home to its nest and enclosed in it. Shaking off the nets of arrows with his wings, he broke that great bow too with his feet, and with his wings he shook to pieces Rāvaṇa's armour, which blazed like fire. The order is clear: first the bow, then the second bow, then the armour; stripped of his weapons one by one, Rāvaṇa is steadily left defenceless. The ten arrows suit the ten-headed one. Calling them like the rods of Death shows how deadly they were, yet they did not turn Jaṭāyus back. In the middle of the battle the poet sets a note of pity: Jānakī is seen weeping in the chariot, and Jaṭāyus forgets his wounds; heroism here means disregarding the body's pain. The image of the nest is lovely too: the net of arrows wraps him like a nest, but a nest shelters while the arrows kill, and that contrast is the point. With his armour broken Rāvaṇa was left unprotected, and that prepares for the wrecking of his chariot. "Shaking them off with his wings" is said twice: his wings were both his shield and his weapon.

Then the strong bird killed the swift, heavenly asses with goblin faces and golden breastplates; the beasts that drew the chariot were destroyed first. Next he shattered the great chariot with its triple pole, which went wherever its master wished, blazing like fire, its body bright with jewelled steps. He swiftly brought down the parasol, bright as the full moon, together with the fans and the rākṣasas who held them. And with a swift stroke of his beak the glorious and mighty king of birds struck off the great head of the charioteer. His bow broken, his chariot gone, his beasts and his driver slain, Rāvaṇa fell to the ground with Vaidehī in his arms. Here the fight reaches its height: an old bird had left the conqueror of the three worlds without a chariot. The destruction of the chariot is told step by step, the beasts, the chariot, the parasol and fans, and last the driver, the way a warrior is unhorsed in the art of war. The parasol bright as the full moon was a royal emblem, and its fall foreshadows the fall of his royal fortune. The word for the asses is "khara", the same as the name of Rāvaṇa's brother already slain by Rāma, and the echo is telling. And the sky-rover now lay on the ground, a foreshadowing of his coming defeat.

Seeing Rāvaṇa fallen on the ground, his chariot shattered, all creatures honoured the vulture king with cries of "Well done! Well done!"; the unseen beings' praise shows that the world stood on dharma's side, and it was Jaṭāyus's one moment of victory, for after it his fortunes turned. Seeing the lord of the bird-flocks worn out by age, Rāvaṇa rejoiced and sprang up again, clutching Maithilī. As he went off in high spirits with Janaka's daughter in his arms, nothing left to him but his sword, all his other gear destroyed, the vulture king flew up and fell on him. Blocking his path, the splendid Jaṭāyus said, "Rāvaṇa, you fool, you are carrying off the wife of Rāma, whose arrows strike like thunderbolts, only to bring about the destruction of the rākṣasas. With your friends and kin, your ministers, your army and your retinue, you are drinking this poison like a thirsty man drinking water. Men who cannot see where their deeds will lead, and have no discernment, perish quickly, and so will you. Bound in Death's noose, where can you go to escape it? You are like a fish that swallows the baited hook and is killed by it." This counsel is sharper than in the last sarga: there it was conciliation, here plain warning of ruin. Poison and the baited hook both taste sweet at first and bring death at the end. "Worn out by age" turns the tide: Jaṭāyus is beaten not by strength but by years. Rāvaṇa's glee is mean, for he takes his enemy's weakness as his chance. "Nothing left but his sword" shows how much he had lost; that one sword would soon cut off Jaṭāyus's wings. The four words, friends and kin, ministers, army, retinue, express the rule of statecraft that one man's sin destroys his whole household, as Laṅkā's fall would prove. "He went off" suggests flight: a victor does not slip away, a beaten man does. And by "blocking his way" Jaṭāyus confronted him from the front and did not strike from behind, keeping to the code of battle.

"The two Kākutsthas can never be withstood, Rāvaṇa; those Rāghavas will not forgive this violation of their hermitage. What you have done, coward, the whole world condemns; this is the way of thieves, not the path heroes walk. If you are a hero, fight; wait one moment, Rāvaṇa, and you will lie slain on the ground like your brother Khara. The kind of deed a man takes up when his end has come, that unrighteous deed you have taken up for your own destruction. What man would do a deed that drags sin after it? Not even the self-existent Lord of the worlds would do it." Having spoken these good words, the valiant Jaṭāyus dropped heavily onto Daśagrīva's back. Gripping him with his sharp talons he tore him all over, like a rider on a vicious elephant goading it. He tore him with his talons, drove his beak into his back and tore out his hair; talons, wings and beak were all his weapons. Tormented again and again by the vulture king, the rākṣasa shook, his lips quivering with rage. Half mad with anger, he clasped Vaidehī to him with his left arm and struck Jaṭāyus with the flat of his hand. But Jaṭāyus darted past him and with his beak tore away his ten left arms. "The way of thieves" is the sharpest thing said: the conqueror of the three worlds is called a thief, for what he took was not won by strength but stolen by trickery. The verse about the end of a man's days points to fate, the root of the saying that when ruin comes, the mind is turned upside down. Then, words over, action begins. The image of the elephant rider is fine: a vicious elephant, however strong, is mastered by the goad, and so Rāvaṇa was for a moment at the mercy of the bird's talons. Tearing away the ten arms is the height of Jaṭāyus's valour: what gods and asuras had not done, an old bird did. "Coward" is the worst insult to a warrior, and Jaṭāyus used it to goad Rāvaṇa into fighting. And the tearing of his hair, the last sign of humiliation, seems a requital for his dragging Sītā by her hair.

As soon as his arms were torn off, other arms sprang up at once, like serpents with flickering tongues of venomous flame coming out of an ant-hill. Then in his rage the mighty Daśagrīva let Sītā go and battered the vulture king with his fists and feet. For a while the two, the chief of the rākṣasas and the best of birds, both of matchless valour, fought on. And as the vulture struggled on for Rāma's sake, Rāvaṇa drew his sword and cut off his wings, his feet and his sides. His wings hacked away by that rākṣasa of savage deeds, the great vulture fell suddenly to the earth with little life left in him. Seeing him lying on the ground, wet with blood, Vaidehī in her grief ran to Jaṭāyus as to one of her own kin. The lord of Laṅkā looked at Jaṭāyus, dark as a thundercloud, with his white breast, noble in valour, lying on the ground like a forest fire gone out. Then Janaka's daughter, her face bright as the moon, took into her arms once more that winged creature crushed and struck down by Rāvaṇa's onslaught, and wept over him. The regrowing arms are the fruit of Rāvaṇa's boon, and the snakes emerging from an ant-hill show how terrible and venomous they were. When he let Sītā go she was, for that moment, free, yet she could not escape; that is the pity of it. "Struggling for Rāma's sake" makes clear why Jaṭāyus died: not for himself, but for the good of his friend's son. The forest fire gone out is a deeply moving image: he who had blazed like a wildfire was now quenched, and death is the going out of that fire. At the end Sītā weeps, without her husband, without his brother, and now without her protector, left all alone. And the poet does not say that Jaṭāyus died, only that little life was left him, for with that little he would live to give Rāma the news, as the story of the Araṇya Kāṇḍa goes on to tell.