रावणस्य अन्तःपुरदर्शनं सीतायाः प्रलोभनं च

Having given his orders to the eight dreadful, powerful rākṣasas, Rāvaṇa, his judgement clouded, thought he had achieved his purpose; the poet says plainly that this satisfaction was born of a perverted mind. Then, thinking of Vaidehī and tormented by the arrows of desire, he hurried into his beautiful palace to see Sītā. There, among the rākṣasa women, he found her sunk in sorrow, her face wet with tears, wretched and crushed under the weight of her grief. She was like a ship going down at sea, overwhelmed by the force of the winds, and like a doe separated from her herd and surrounded by hounds; in both images the fault lies not in her but in her plight, the ship sinking under a power from outside, the doe cut off from her protector and ringed with terror. She did not answer him or plead with him; she only wept, and this, her first response, remains unchanged at the end of the sarga. The night-ranger came up to her as she sat with her face bowed, helpless, wretched and in the grip of sorrow, and by force he began to show her his palace, which was like the house of a god. "By force," says the poet, for even this showing was a torment to her. So the sarga opens by setting two opposite states side by side, Rāvaṇa's deluded joy and Sītā's utterly unsupported misery. He did not see her grief; he thought his wealth was the way to win her, and that was his fundamental mistake.

The palace was crowded with mansions and terraces, thronged with a thousand women, full of flocks of birds of every kind and set with jewels of every sort. Its beauty was heightened by pillars of ivory, of refined gold, of crystal and of silver, inlaid with diamond and beryl, a delight to the eye, and the sound of heavenly drums was always heard there. He climbed with her up a splendid stairway of gold wrought with burnished gold. There were lattice windows of ivory and silver, pleasant to look at, and rows of terraces hung with nets of gold. All through his house the ten-necked one showed Maithilī floors patterned with plaster and gems, and he showed Sītā, sunk in grief, long pools and lotus ponds covered with flowers of every kind. The poet leads the description upward, from the breadth of the palace to its pillars, up the staircase, to the lattices and terraces above, and then across the floors and pools, and the ascent mirrors the rising of Rāvaṇa's pride. The materials grow richer as it goes, ivory, heated gold, crystal, silver, diamond and beryl, and here begins the famous picture of Laṅkā's wealth that the Sundara Kāṇḍa will spread out at length. Yet all this splendour had only one result, Sītā's deeper aversion: the more the riches grew, the more her grief grew. The poet calls her "sunk in grief" again at the end, as if to say she saw none of it, and the verbs of showing are always his, never hers.

When he had shown Vaidehī the whole of that magnificent palace, the evil-minded Rāvaṇa spoke to her, meaning to tempt her. "Leaving aside the old and the children among the night-rangers, there are thirty-two crores of rākṣasas, and I am the master of them all, terrible as their deeds are; a thousand of them wait on me alone, ready for my commands. All this machinery of my kingdom rests on you, and my life too, wide-eyed one; you are dearer to me than my own breath. Of the many fine women who make up my household, you shall be mistress over them all. Become my wife, my beloved. What good can come of setting your mind against it? Agree to what I say. I am burning with desire; accept me. You should show me favour." His speech had three parts: a display of power, an offer of himself, and a plea. The huge number was a boast meant to present him as lord of the three worlds, yet in the same breath, saying that all he had rested on her, he made himself pitiable, and that contradiction is the mark of desire. He even spoke of the cruelty of his subjects with pride. "Accept me," he said, a word he will repeat, and in asking her favour the king of the rākṣasas took the part of a beggar, a part he will play out fully when he falls at her feet. Sītā said nothing, and her silence was the only reply.

Now Rāvaṇa mixed threat with hope. "This Laṅkā, a hundred leagues across, is ringed by the sea; not even the gods and asuras with Indra at their head could storm it. Among gods, yakṣas, gandharvas and seers, I see no one in all the worlds who is my equal in valour. What will you do with Rāma, a man thrown out of his kingdom, wretched, an ascetic who goes about on foot, a mere man of little power? Take me instead, Sītā; I am a husband worthy of you. Youth does not last, timid one; enjoy yourself here with me. Put away all thought of seeing Rāghava, lovely one. What power has he to come here, however much he may long to? The wind rushing through the sky cannot be bound with ropes, nor can the bright flames of a blazing fire be grasped." By these images he meant to show that she was beyond anyone's reach, but to the listener they call to mind that Rāma is the one who cannot be stopped; wind and fire are really images of Rāma. The poet works by irony here. His scorn for Rāma as "a mere man of little power" turns against him too, for the one gap in Brahmā's boon was that death could come to him from a man. And he used the common saying that youth does not last as a spur to pleasure, when it is usually a call to turn away from it. Scorn, self-praise and simile all recoil on the speaker; that is the subtlety of Vālmīki's craft.

"In all three worlds, beautiful one, I see no one who could take you away by force while you are guarded by my arms. Rule this great kingdom of Laṅkā; men like me, and the gods themselves, and all that moves and does not move, shall be your servants. Bathed in the waters of consecration, be content and take your pleasure. Whatever evil you did in the past has been used up by your life in the forest, and of whatever good you did, reap the fruit here. Here are all the garlands of heavenly fragrance, Maithilī, and the finest ornaments; enjoy them with me. My brother Vaiśravaṇa had a flying chariot called Puṣpaka, bright as the sun, vast, delightful and swift as thought, and I took it from him by force in battle." He laid out wealth, kingdom and pleasure in turn, and the boast that he had seized Puṣpaka by force only revealed his betrayal of his own brother. In claiming that her past sins had been spent by her life in the forest, he treated her exile with Rāma as the fruit of wrongdoing, the most twisted view of all, for to Sītā that life in the forest was her very dharma. By speaking of her bathed in the water of consecration he wanted to set her up as queen of Laṅkā, since for him a kingdom was the greatest temptation of all. But Sītā had already left the kingdom of Ayodhyā to come to the forest, so this lure too was empty. The poet does not say so outright; he lets her silence say it, and her answer will come in the next sarga.

"There, Sītā, roam with me as you please. This face of yours, spotless and lovely as a lotus, does not shine, fair one, while it is stricken with grief." As he spoke, the lovely Sītā covered her moon-like face with the end of her garment and let her tears slowly fall. This was her only act in the whole sarga: she neither consented nor argued, she only turned her eyes away, and that silence will be broken in the next sarga, when she answers him with a blade of grass placed between them. Seeing her brooding, as though ill, her radiance dimmed by sorrow, the bold night-ranger spoke again. "Enough of this shame, Vaidehī, this fear of breaking dharma. What will overtake you is an ancient custom handed down from the seers, lady. See, I press my ten heads to your smooth feet; show me your favour quickly. I am your obedient slave. Do not let these words of mine be spoken in vain; I say them parched with longing. Rāvaṇa never bows his head to any woman." Bowing at her feet was the rākṣasa king's final humiliation: he who bowed to no woman now bowed, and still did not win her, and pride and pleading met in a single sentence. Having said this, the ten-necked one, already fallen under the sway of Death, believed that she was now his. On that false certainty the sarga ends, a longer closing verse giving it weight; and by saying he was in Death's power the poet gives his own verdict, that this hope of Rāvaṇa's came not from reason but from his appointed end.