पञ्चसेनापतिवधः

When he learned that the ministers' sons had been killed by the great-souled monkey, Rāvaṇa hid his feelings, not letting the fear inside him show, and took a shrewd decision. He commanded the five generals at the head of his army, Virūpākṣa and Yūpākṣa, the rākṣasa Durdhara, Praghasa and Bhāsakarṇa, heroes skilled in policy, steady in the task of seizing Hanumān, and as swift as the wind in battle. "Go, all you leaders of the army, with great forces, with horses, chariots and elephants, and let that monkey be punished." "Hiding his feelings" reveals his state of mind: as king he could not show fear in his court, yet anxiety was growing in his heart. The Kiṅkaras, Jambumālin and the ministers' sons, three attempts had failed; now he sent his generals themselves, and so the rank of the warriors rose step by step. That all five were sent together is proof of his misgiving; he knew that one would not be enough.

"You must be on your guard when you reach that forest creature, and act in a way that suits the place and the time. Judging by his deeds, I do not think he is a monkey; he is in every way some great being of great power. Even knowing him to be a monkey, my mind is not at ease; from the way this affair has gone, I do not think him a monkey at all. He may have been created by Indra through the power of austerity to bring about our ruin. With you sent against them I conquered the nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, gods, asuras and great seers, and they are bound to do us some harm in return. That is what this is, no doubt of it. Seize him by force. Go, all you leaders of the army, with great forces, with horses, chariots and elephants, and let that monkey be punished. You must not underestimate this monkey of steady valour." Here Rāvaṇa's intelligence shows: he tried to work out his enemy's nature by reasoning, and remembering old enmities, he imagined a cause, guessing it was revenge for the gods' defeat. He repeated the order he had given at the start, a sign of how anxious and agitated he was. "Act in a way that suits the place and the time" is advice that one must act not by strength alone but with regard to place and time, a basic principle of statecraft. Rāvaṇa recalled his own past deeds, "I conquered the gods, yakṣas and gandharvas, so they will take revenge"; so the memory of his own wrongs was the root of his fear. Strangely, he came close to the truth, for Hanumān was indeed born of a god's portion, yet he never thought of Rāma's name. The word "monkey" kept coming up in his speech, and each time with the doubt that this was no monkey.

"For I have seen monkeys of great prowess before: Vālin, Sugrīva, mighty Jāmbavān, the commander Nīla, and others like Dvivida. None of them moved so terribly, nor had such energy or valour, such intelligence, strength and drive, or such power to change form. Know this to be some great being standing in a monkey's shape. Make a great effort and have him captured. Granted that the three worlds, with Indra, the gods, asuras and men, could not stand before you on the field of battle; still, one who knows policy and seeks victory in battle must guard himself with care, for success in war is fickle." Accepting their master's words, all those men of great vigour made ready to set out. Rāvaṇa both praised his generals and put them on their guard, which is sound policy. "Success in war is fickle" is a well-known maxim: even the strong perish through carelessness. By naming Vālin and the others he showed that he already knew the monkeys' strength; his fight with Vālin is well known from the Uttara Kāṇḍa. But not even from them had he seen such deeds, and that astonished him. "Granted that the three worlds could not stand before you" fed his generals' pride, and "still" urged caution, so he joined praise and advice together. His advice to guard themselves also suggests that he was uncertain how this fight would end. They, however, went out full of pride after hearing their master, not with caution, and that was why they perished.

Radiant as fire and full of speed, with rutting elephants, swift horses and chariots, with all kinds of sharp weapons and all their forces, they rushed out. Then the heroes saw the great monkey blazing like the rising sun wreathed in the rays of its own splendour, standing on the gateway, great in speed, great in spirit, great in strength, great in intelligence, great in energy, great in body and great in arms. The moment they saw him, they took up positions on every side and rushed at him from all directions with their various terrible weapons. Durdhara drove five sharp iron arrows into his head, white with gold-covered tips, like lotus petals. The word "great" repeated again and again shows Hanumān's greatness on every side: speed, spirit, strength, intelligence, energy, body and arms. The image of the rising sun is especially apt: as the rising sun destroys the darkness, so would he destroy the rākṣasas, and as no one can look straight at the sun, neither could they look at him. They stood in every direction, so he was surrounded, yet there was no fear on his face. Durdhara struck first, and so he was the first to die.

Pierced in the head by the five arrows, the monkey leapt roaring into the sky, making the ten directions ring. Then the mighty hero Durdhara came at him in his chariot, his bow at the ready, scattering hundreds upon hundreds of arrows. In the sky the monkey held him off as he rained arrows, as the wind holds off a rain-laden cloud at the end of the rains. Harassed by Durdhara, the son of the Wind roared again, and the mighty one grew in size. Leaping far up in an instant, the monkey came down with great speed on Durdhara's chariot, like a mass of lightning striking a mountain. Then Durdhara, his chariot's eight horses crushed and its axle and pole broken, left the chariot and fell to the ground, his life gone. Here Hanumān took up no weapon; he crushed the chariot with the weight of his own body, and the eight horses, the axle and the pole were all smashed. The mass of lightning conveys his speed and his brilliance. The wind holding off a cloud recalls the very work of Hanumān's father. Though pierced in the head, he grew larger; the blow only increased his zeal. Durdhara's name means "hard to withstand", yet Hanumān overcame him in an instant, the opposite of what his name promised. His fall from the chariot was itself his death; Hanumān did not even strike him directly. The fight moved between sky and ground: Hanumān leapt into the sky, the rākṣasa stayed in his chariot shooting upwards, and in the end the monkey, falling from above, won. That the first of the five was killed like this put fear into the minds of the rest.

Seeing Durdhara fallen on the ground, Virūpākṣa and Yūpākṣa, invincible tamers of foes, leapt up in fury. The long-armed monkey had sprung up at once and stood in the clear sky, and the two of them struck him on the chest with mallets. Checking the onrush of those two swift rākṣasas, the mighty one dropped back to the ground, swift as Garuḍa. Then the monkey went to a sāla tree, tore it up and killed both those rākṣasa heroes. The two attacked together, since one alone was not enough. Hanumān first checked their charge, then came down to the ground to look for a weapon, and a sāla tree became his weapon. Like Garuḍa he swooped down from the sky, as Garuḍa swoops to kill serpents. The mallets struck his chest, yet he did not flinch, the mark of a body hard as the thunderbolt. The two came together like brothers and died together, felled by a single tree. Seeing Durdhara killed, they were roused to fury, and anger robbed them of their judgement.

Knowing that three had been slain by the swift monkey, the mighty Praghasa, very fast, came at him laughing, and the powerful Bhāsakarṇa came too, enraged, seizing a spear. The two stood together on one side against the glorious tiger among monkeys. Praghasa struck that elephant among monkeys with a sharp-pointed battle-axe, and the rākṣasa Bhāsakarṇa with his spear. His limbs wounded by the two of them and his hair smeared with blood, the monkey grew angry and shone like the morning sun. Then the hero Hanumān, elephant among monkeys, tore up a mountain peak with its beasts, serpents and trees and struck the two rākṣasas with it, and crushed by the peak, they were ground to bits no bigger than sesame seeds. Praghasa's laughter shows his arrogance. Wet with blood, Hanumān glowed red as the young sun; as in the previous sarga, his wounds only added to his splendour. That he tore up a mountain peak with its beasts, serpents and trees shows his extraordinary strength. The weapons grow here too: first a chariot, then a tree, now a mountain peak; as his enemies grew stronger, his weapons grew greater. The two stood on one side together, so he killed both with a single peak, a deliberate stroke of tactics. Ground to the size of sesame seeds, they were utterly destroyed. Praghasa's battle-axe and Bhāsakarṇa's spear were both sharp weapons, yet they only wounded him.

When the five generals had perished, the monkey destroyed what was left of their army. Horses with horses, elephants with elephants, warriors with warriors, chariots with chariots: so the monkey destroyed them, as thousand-eyed Indra destroys the asuras. With dead elephants and horses, great chariots with broken axles and slain rākṣasas, the ground was blocked on every side. Having slain in battle those commanders of the host with their forces and their mounts, the hero took his stand again on the gateway, as before, like Time waiting for its moment at the destruction of all creatures. "Horses with horses" describes his way of fighting: he picked up one enemy and hurled it at another, so that the enemies' own bodies became his weapons. The image of Time comes at the close of these sargas again and again: he waits like Time, ready to devour the next enemy. The ground "blocked on every side" shows how wide the slaughter was; not even a path to come or go remained. And the comparison with Indra presents Hanumān's work almost as the work of the gods: as Indra destroys the asuras, so he destroyed the rākṣasas.