दधिमुखस्य पराभवः सुग्रीवसमीपगमनं च

Hanumān, best of the tawny monkeys and bull among them, said to the monkeys: "Enjoy the honey with untroubled minds, monkeys; I shall hold off anyone who stands in your way." In saying this he took on himself the responsibility for the whole quarrel that followed. Hearing him, Aṅgada, foremost of the tawny ones, answered gladly: "Let the monkeys drink the honey. Hanumān has accomplished his task, and I must certainly do as he says even if it were something that ought not to be done; how much more a thing like this!" So Aṅgada acknowledged the worth of Hanumān's service: the word of the one who had found Sītā was like a command even to the crown prince, and if even a wrong thing was to be done at his word, how much more a drink of honey. Earlier Aṅgada had given leave after consulting the elders; now Hanumān himself took on the burden of protecting them, and together their words made the monkeys fearless. Hearing this from Aṅgada's lips, the bulls among monkeys were delighted and honoured him with cries of "Well said, well said!", showing their affection and loyalty to the prince. Having honoured Aṅgada, all the monkeys rushed at Madhuvana as a river in flood rushes at a tree on its bank; as the current does not see the tree, so they paid no heed to the keepers. They entered Madhuvana and overpowered its keepers by force. Given free rein, and made bold because Hanumān had seen Maithilī and the rest had heard of it, they all drank the honey and took the juicy fruit. The very opening of the sarga foreshadows the quarrel to come.

Leaping up, they fell on the keepers who had gathered and beat them by the hundred, and gave themselves up to the Honey Grove. Some of the monkeys seized in their arms honeycombs as big as a droṇa, an old measure, and drank in troops, full of glee. All together they struck at the combs; others ate; some of the honey-coloured monkeys drank and flung the rest of the honey away. Some, grown wild, pelted one another with the wax; others stood at the foot of the trees holding on to the branches, for in their drunkenness they needed something to hold even to stand. Others, utterly spent with drink, spread leaves on the ground and lay down on them. Frantic and drunk with honey, the monkeys gleefully threw things at one another, and others staggered about; some roared like lions and some warbled merrily like birds. Some, drunk with honey, lay asleep on the ground; the bold ones laughed while others wept; some did one thing and said another, and some understood one thing for another, for drink had broken the link between what was done and what was said. The poet shows the stages of drunkenness in order, first delight, then play, then exhaustion, and at last sleep and muddled wits; the grabbing of the combs, the drinking in troops, the throwing away of the leftovers, the pelting with wax are like children at play. Even the honey-keepers, Dadhimukha's servants, were checked by those fearsome monkeys and fled in every direction; some had been scraped along the ground by the monkeys' knees, and some had been tossed up and shown the path of the gods. They were few and the monkeys countless, so their flight was inevitable, and they fled not together but scattered, each wherever he had been struck. The keepers' plight leads to what follows, for it is they who will report to Dadhimukha.

Deeply distressed, the keepers went to Dadhimukha and said: "The monkeys, emboldened by Hanumān, have ravaged Madhuvana by force; and we have been scraped along the ground by their knees and tossed into the sky." Their report was short but complete: it said who the offenders were, what the offence was, and what they had suffered. They named Hanumān as the source of it, and rightly, for it was he who had said he would hold off anyone who stood in the monkeys' way. Then Dadhimukha, keeper of the grove, grew angry when he heard that Madhuvana had been ravaged; first he reassured his servants, as a leader should, and only then made ready to fight. "Come, come," he said, "let us go to those arrogant monkeys; I shall hold back by force those who are devouring the finest honey." Hearing Dadhimukha's words, the heroic keepers went back to Madhuvana with him. In their midst Dadhimukha, gripping a great tree firmly, charged at speed, and all the monkeys with him. Enraged, the keepers took up rocks, trees and stones, the natural weapons of monkeys, and came to where the elephants among monkeys were. Biting their lips in rage and threatening again and again, they closed on the monkeys to hold them back by force; their fury was fierce, but their defeat would come quickly. Then, seeing Dadhimukha enraged, the bulls among monkeys, with Hanumān at their head, rushed at him at full speed, and so Hanumān kept his word. Here two sides faced each other, the keepers defending the king's grove and the victorious monkeys celebrating their triumph; each side had right on its side, which makes the quarrel both pitiable and comic.

As Dadhimukha came on, long-armed, mighty and furiously swift, with his tree in his hands, Aṅgada in anger seized him with both arms. Blind with drink, he showed no pity and never stopped to think, "This is my elder": Dadhimukha was the maternal uncle of Sugrīva, Aṅgada's paternal uncle, and so stood to Aṅgada almost as a grandfather, to be revered, yet in his drunkenness Aṅgada forgot it. He quickly flung him to the ground and crushed him with force. With his arms, thighs and face broken, bewildered and bathed in blood, that great hero among monkeys lay senseless for a while. Here the fruit of drunkenness is plain: those who had only been playing now struck even an elder. The poet does not approve Aṅgada's deed, but by calling him "blind with drink" he names its cause; in the next sarga Aṅgada himself will ask Dadhimukha's forgiveness. Then, somehow freed from the monkeys, that bull among monkeys went apart and spoke to his own servants who had gathered round him.

"Leave them be," he said. "Come, let us go to where our master is, the monkey Sugrīva of the mighty neck, who is staying with Rāma. We shall tell the king all of Aṅgada's offence; he is quick to anger, and when he hears what I say he will have these monkeys put to death. This Madhuvana is dear to the great Sugrīva; it came down to him from his father and grandfather; it is divine, and even the gods cannot violate it. Sugrīva will punish all these honey-greedy monkeys with death, together with their friends; their days are numbered. These wicked creatures, who have set themselves against the king's command, deserve to die, and then the anger born of my indignation will bear fruit." Dadhimukha's anger was natural: he was the guardian of the king's command, and an insult to him was an insult to the king. That the grove was an inheritance from Sugrīva's father and grandfather made the offence graver, and in wanting all of them killed, friends and all, his anger reached its height; the words "deserve to die", "put to death", "days are numbered" keep coming back, showing how stirred his wounded mind was. He remembered Sugrīva as quick to anger, for Sugrīva's wrath in his quarrel with Vālin was well known. But his hope would turn out the opposite way: from this very report Sugrīva would guess that Sītā had been found, and would order no punishment at all, as the reader already knows. Having said this, mighty Dadhimukha leapt up at once with the keepers of the grove and set off, and in the twinkling of an eye that dweller in the wood arrived where the wise Sugrīva, son of the thousand-rayed Sun, was, with Rāma, on Mount Prasravaṇa. Seeing Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, and Sugrīva too, he dropped from the sky onto level ground, not right beside Sugrīva, as the decorum of a royal court required. Having alighted, the great hero Dadhimukha, chief of the keepers, surrounded by all his keepers, with a downcast face and his hands folded above his head, at once pressed his head to Sugrīva's feet: the downcast face, the folded hands and the head at the feet are the three signs of one seeking refuge. He would make his report in the presence of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, which made the matter weightier still. So the thread of the story turns: a quarrel begun for punishment will become the means of bringing the news that Sītā has been seen, and even Dadhimukha's humiliation will serve Rāma's cause.