निवातकवचमैत्री कालकेयवधः वरुणपुत्रपराजयश्च

Agastya continued his story. Having conquered Yama, the bull among the gods, Rāvaṇa, who gloried in battle, went back to find his companions. When the rākṣasas saw him, his limbs drenched in blood and battered by blows, they were struck with amazement: the marks of the fight with Yama stood plain on his body, and it was clear the victory had not come cheaply. Mārīca and the rest hailed him with cries of triumph and, comforted by Rāvaṇa, climbed back into the Puṣpaka. These were the very followers who had fled at the first sight of Yama's chariot, and now they were loudest in shouting victory — such is the way of a king's servants; yet Rāvaṇa did not reproach them but reassured them, and that too was part of his skill as a leader. Then the rākṣasa went down into Rasātala, the treasury of the waters, where hosts of daityas and serpents lived under Varuṇa's protection. The poet imagines Rasātala as the depths beneath the ocean, and because it was Varuṇa's to guard, Varuṇa was Rāvaṇa's true goal; the serpents and daityas were merely on the way. First he came to Bhogavatī, the city of the serpents ruled by their king Vāsuki, and brought the serpents under his power — the poet's brief phrase suggests they yielded without a fight. Delighted, he went on to the city made of jewels, where the daityas called Nivātakavacas lived, made mighty by boons from Brahmā. Rāvaṇa went up to them and challenged them to battle. They were all valiant and strong, armed with every kind of weapon, eager and wild for war; the four descriptions together show their full strength and prepare the ground for a long struggle between equals. And Rāvaṇa, for all the wounds on his body, did not stop to rest: his spirit was undimmed, and he pressed on.

With spears, tridents, thunderbolts, broad-bladed spears, swords and axes the enraged rākṣasas and dānavas hacked at one another — the list of weapons alone shows how savage the fighting was. A full year and more went by, far longer than the seven nights of the battle with Yama, and neither side won or was destroyed, for both were shielded by Brahmā's boons. Then the Grandfather himself, the imperishable refuge of the three worlds, came there swiftly in his splendid aerial car. The aged Grandfather, whose age speaks of his experience and his dignity, stopped the Nivātakavacas from fighting and spoke to them as one who knew how things stood. "This Rāvaṇa cannot be conquered in battle by gods or asuras," he said, "and you cannot be destroyed even by the immortals and the dānavas together. I would like to see the rākṣasa made your friend. Between friends all things are shared; of that there is no doubt." Once again Brahmā came as a peacemaker: in the previous sarga he had held back Yama's staff, and here he stopped a war. His reasoning was simple — the two sides were evenly matched, fighting was pointless, and friendship was better; and his closing words were a maxim of good policy, that friends hold their wealth and pleasures in common. Rāvaṇa heeded the Grandfather here as always, for he lived under the shelter of Brahmā's boon. He sealed the friendship there with fire as witness, the solemn way of making an alliance — the same way Rāma and Sugrīva would later make theirs — and he was delighted with the Nivātakavacas. They honoured him as was fitting, and he stayed with them a year, finding every comfort there that he might have had in his own city; this friendship was a quiet pause in his campaign of conquest. While he was there he learned a hundred magic arts and mastered them — the art of fighting by illusion was a rākṣasa speciality, and these would serve him in battles to come. So he gained by friendship what he could not win by force, a sign of his cleverness. Then, in search of the city of the lord of the waters, he roamed on through Rasātala.

Next he came to the city called Aśma, the Stone City, held by the Kālakeyas, and slew those mighty Kālakeyas there. Among them was Vidyujjihva, strong and fierce, the husband of Śūrpaṇakhā and so Rāvaṇa's own brother-in-law. His very name, "lightning-tongue", tells of his dreadful form, a tongue flickering like lightning, and in the fight he seemed to be licking at the rākṣasa with it. Rāvaṇa cut him down with his sword, and having overcome him, in a single moment he slew four hundred daityas more. The episode is short but weighty: Śūrpaṇakhā's husband died at Rāvaṇa's own hand. This is what will make her lament in the next sarga, what will send her to live in the Daṇḍaka forest, and so, in the end, lies at the root of Sītā's abduction. It is a grim moment in Rāvaṇa's conquest of the world — he did not spare even his own sister's husband — and later he himself will excuse it by saying that in the frenzy of battle he did not know whom he was striking.

Then the lord of the rākṣasas saw the divine abode of Varuṇa, white as a pale cloud and shining like Kailāsa, lofty and bright. There he saw the cow Surabhi standing and streaming milk, and from the flow of her milk comes the ocean called the Sea of Milk. She is the mother of the great bull; from her sea the moon arises, the cool-rayed maker of night; the great seers who live on foam, taking only the foam of the Sea of Milk as their food in their austerity, depend on her; and from her came the nectar of the gods and svadhā, the food of the ancestors who live on svadhā. So the poet traces a line of origins — Surabhi's milk, the Sea of Milk, and from it the moon, nectar and svadhā — and the moon's birth from that sea recalls the story of the churning of the ocean. Surabhi is known in the Purāṇas as the wish-fulfilling cow. Men in the world call her by the name Surabhi, and Rāvaṇa walked round that most wonderful cow, keeping her on his right, the way one honours what is holy. It is a subtle contrast worth noticing: for all his wickedness, some reverence for the mother of cattle remained in him, and he treated her as a goddess. Then he entered Varuṇa's terrible domain, guarded by many kinds of forces, and saw Varuṇa's splendid house, crowded with hundreds of fountains as befits the home of the god of waters, white as an autumn cloud and forever joyful.

Rāvaṇa cut down the commanders of the army, and was struck by them in turn; then he said to the warriors, "Go quickly and tell your king that Rāvaṇa has come seeking battle. Let him give me battle — or else fold your hands and say, 'I am defeated,' and you need have no fear." It was his usual challenge, fight or surrender, and the demand for folded hands shows his arrogance. Meanwhile the sons and grandsons of great-souled Varuṇa came out in anger, and with them Go and Puṣkara, commanders of his army; with the lord of the waters away, the protection of his house was their duty. Endowed with every virtue and surrounded by their own forces, they yoked chariots that went wherever their drivers wished and came out shining like the rising sun. Then a terrible, hair-raising battle broke out between the sons of the lord of the waters and the wise Rāvaṇa — the poet grants even the enemy his intelligence. In a moment Daśagrīva's mighty ministers struck down the whole of Varuṇa's army; the very men who had run from Yama were heroes before Varuṇa's host. Seeing their army destroyed and tormented by a net of arrows, Varuṇa's sons withdrew from the fight on the ground, but they did not give it up; they only changed their ground. Seeing Rāvaṇa in the Puṣpaka above them, they rose swiftly into the sky in their fast chariots. Having gained a position equal to his, they fought a great battle with him in the air, as tumultuous as a battle of gods and dānavas. With arrows like fire — fire from the sons of the god of water, a pretty paradox — they turned Rāvaṇa back, and in their delight they raised shouts of every kind. Once more Rāvaṇa was in danger, and being driven back was a blow to his pride.

Then Mahodara, enraged to see his king overpowered, cast aside all fear of death and looked about him, eager for battle — a servant's devotion to his master. With his mace he struck down in battle the horses of Varuṇa's sons, swift as the wind and going wherever they were driven, and they fell to the ground. Having slain their warriors and horses and seeing the princes standing without chariots, he gave a great roar. Their chariots, horses and fine charioteers together, lay smashed on the ground by Mahodara. But the heroic sons of great-souled Varuṇa were not dismayed: they left their broken chariots and stood in the sky by their own divine power. Stringing their bows, they pierced Mahodara and then together, in anger, closed in round Rāvaṇa. With terrible arrows like thunderbolts shot from their bows they tore at him in their fury as clouds tear at a great mountain — and, as in earlier sargas, the mountain image recalls how steadfast he was. Then Daśagrīva, enraged and swelling like the fire at the end of time, let fall a dreadful rain of arrows on their vital parts. Standing above them in the sky, which made his blows the heavier, the invincible one rained down on them pestles of many kinds, hundreds of broad-headed arrows, bladed spears, javelins and great śataghnīs, the "hundred-killers" — a list that shows the wealth of his armoury. Struck down, those heroes fell to the ground and stood there on foot, and under that assault they sank down like sixty-year-old elephants caught in a great bog, an image of strength grown helpless. Seeing the princes sinking and bewildered, the mighty Rāvaṇa roared with joy like a great rain-cloud, and letting out great roars he struck them with weapons of every kind as a cloud strikes with torrents of rain. Then they all turned back and fell to the ground, and their own men quickly carried them from the field into their houses: they were beaten, not slain. The battle had moved in three stages — Mahodara's attack and the wrecking of the chariots, the princes' counter-attack that hemmed Rāvaṇa in, and Rāvaṇa's decisive storm of arrows — with fortune rising and falling on both sides at each turn. Rāvaṇa did not pursue the fallen; his target was Varuṇa himself. His victory seemed complete, but with Varuṇa absent he had not truly conquered a guardian of the world.

Then the rākṣasa said to them, "Let it be reported to Varuṇa." But Varuṇa's minister, whose name was Prahāsa, answered Rāvaṇa: "The great king, lord of the waters, whom you are calling to battle, has gone to the world of Brahmā to hear the music of the gandharvas. What is the use of your toiling, hero, now that the king is away? The princes who were here have been beaten." His words were courteous and shrewd, gently showing Rāvaṇa that his effort was wasted. It is a curious turn in the story: the guardian of the world did not come to battle at all but had gone to listen to music, and so Rāvaṇa's conquest of Varuṇa remained incomplete. Hearing this, the lord of the rākṣasas proclaimed his own name and, shouting with joy, left Varuṇa's abode. He turned back by the way he had come, rose into the sky, and set off towards Laṅkā.