हृतस्त्रीणां विलापः शापश्च, शूर्पणखायाः आश्वासनं दण्डके प्रेषणं च

Agastya went on. On his way home, full of joy, the wicked Rāvaṇa carried off along the road the daughters of kings, seers, gods and dānavas. Whenever the rākṣasa saw a lovely maiden or woman, he killed her kinsfolk and shut her up in his aerial car — so his cruelty was doubled, for he not only seized the woman but slew those who would have protected her. In this way he loaded the car with the daughters of serpents, rākṣasīs, asura and human women, the daughters of yakṣas and dānavas: no race in any world was safe from his greed, and the poet shows how far his power, and the harm he did with it, reached. Having conquered, he took women as a victor takes plunder; lust was the last chapter of his conquest of the world. All of them together wept, and their tears, born of the fire of sorrow and fear, were like tongues of flame — grief burns like fire, so even its water is hot. As rivers fill the ocean, so those flawless women filled the car with the ill-omened tears of fear and grief. By the hundred they wept in the aerial car, daughters of serpents and gandharvas, of great seers, of daityas and dānavas. They were long-haired and lovely in every limb, with faces like the full moon, full-breasted, their waists gleaming like a diamond-set altar, their hips curving like the pole of a chariot; they were like the wives of the gods and shone like refined gold. The poet paints their beauty only to deepen the pity of it: women fair as goddesses were now captives. Slender-waisted and distraught, terrified by grief and sorrow and fear, they sighed until the Puṣpaka seemed ablaze on every side, like a fire-sanctuary in which the sacred fire is shut in and smoulders. The car that had been the emblem of Rāvaṇa's victories had become a prison. Fallen into Daśagrīva's power, overwhelmed with grief, with piteous faces and eyes, these young women were like does in the grip of a lion, helpless. One of them wondered, "Will he eat me?" — a reminder that a rākṣasa eats men, so that they feared not only slavery but death. The passage begins with Rāvaṇa's joy and ends with the women's terror, and that contrast sets the mood of the whole sarga. All of it foreshadows the abduction of Sītā: Rāvaṇa's desire for other men's wives will be the cause of his ruin.

Another, deep in misery, thought, "He may even kill me." Remembering their mothers and fathers, their husbands and brothers, the women, overwhelmed with grief and sorrow, lamented together, all weeping as one. "How will my son manage without me?" cried one — a mother's worry coming first. "How will my mother bear it, and my brother, sunk in an ocean of grief? Alas, what shall I do without my husband? Death, I beg you, take me, for I have nothing left but sorrow." Each woman's pain grew as she remembered her own people, son, mother, brother, husband, and the prayer for death was the depth of their despair. "What evil did I do in some earlier life," they asked, "that we should all be so afflicted, fallen into an ocean of grief? We can see no end to this sorrow of ours." In the way of Indian thought they looked for the cause of their suffering in sins done in a former birth — the same law of deeds and their fruits that was set out in the description of Yama's world in the twenty-first sarga.

"Shame on the world of men!" they said. "There is none lower, for our husbands were weak, and the mighty Rāvaṇa has destroyed them as the rising sun at dawn blots out the stars." They were condemning a world where the strong rule and not the right, and the image of sun and stars grants Rāvaṇa's power: when he rises, the light of others fades. "Ah, this rākṣasa, mighty as he is, delights only in ways of killing! Ah, he has taken to wickedness and feels no disgust at himself!" Their thrice-repeated "Ah" carries wonder, reproach and grief all at once. "His valour is truly worthy of him, evil as he is; but this deed, laying hands on other men's wives, is unworthy even of him. Because this vilest of rākṣasas takes his pleasure with other men's women, this evil-minded one shall meet his death through a woman." The fairness of their judgement is worth noticing: they did not belittle his prowess; they condemned only his assault on other men's wives. As soon as those chaste and noble women had spoken, drums sounded in the sky and a rain of flowers fell: the gods accepted the curse, for it was backed by the power of the women's faithfulness. This was the third curse on Rāvaṇa, after those of Vedavatī in the seventeenth sarga and Anaraṇya in the nineteenth. All three foretell his end, but this one is precise: death through a woman — that is, at Rāma's hand, on account of Sītā — and so it fixes the divine cause behind the main story of the Rāmāyaṇa. Cursed by those faithful, virtuous wives, Rāvaṇa at once seemed like one whose strength had been struck away, lustreless and downcast; the power of their devotion showed itself immediately. Yet, hearing their lament all the way, the bull among rākṣasas entered the city of Laṅkā and was honoured by the night-rovers — his subjects either did not know of his sin or did not care.

At that moment a terrible rākṣasī who could take any form she wished suddenly fell to the ground before him: it was Śūrpaṇakhā, Rāvaṇa's sister. Raising her up and comforting her, Rāvaṇa said, "What is this, good lady? What is it you are so eager to tell me?" Her eyes red and choked with tears — grief and anger at once — she said, "King, you have made me a widow, by force, mighty as you are. In battle, king, by your valour you slew the daityas known as the Kālakeyas, fourteen thousand of them. Among them was my husband, mighty and dearer to me than life, and he too, dear brother, was killed by you — an enemy who only smells like a brother." A brother in name, she meant, and in truth a foe. "You, my own kinsman, have killed me too, king," she said, for with her husband dead she was as good as dead herself, "and because of you I must bear the name of widow" — the word itself would be her lot in the world. "Surely you should have protected your brother-in-law even in battle, yet you killed him yourself — are you not ashamed?" To protect a sister's husband is a kinsman's duty, and her question struck at Rāvaṇa's pride. Her lament echoes the one before it: outside the city strange women wept, and at home his own sister. Its consequences would be long: Śūrpaṇakhā's life in the Daṇḍaka forest, her meeting with Rāma, and in the end the abduction of Sītā.

As his sister cried out at him in this way, Daśagrīva comforted her and spoke gently. "Enough of weeping, child," he said, the tender word showing a brother's affection, "you have nothing at all to fear. I will take every care to please you with gifts, honour and favour" — the three means a king uses to console. "Mad with battle, carried away, bent on victory and shooting my arrows as I fought, I could not tell my own people from the enemy. In the frenzy of the fight I struck out and did not recognise my brother-in-law. That is how your husband came to be killed by me in battle, sister. Now I will do for you what this moment calls for, for your good." Rāvaṇa was defending himself: he admitted the deed but blamed the madness of battle, not hatred, and his chief plea was that he had acted unknowingly. He hoped to quiet his sister's grief with wealth and honour, as a king would, and offered a practical remedy. But his comfort did not end her pain; in time her anger would drive the abduction of Sītā.

"Go and live beside your brother Khara, who wields great power," said Rāvaṇa. "He will be lord of fourteen thousand mighty rākṣasas, free to lead them on the march and to pay them as he sees fit. Khara, your cousin, the son of your mother's sister, will be master there, and the night-rover will always carry out your commands. Let this hero go quickly to guard the Daṇḍaka forest, with mighty Dūṣaṇa as his commander. There the brave Khara will always do your bidding, and he will be lord of rākṣasas who can take any form they please." With that Daśagrīva gave him an army of fourteen thousand valiant rākṣasas. Surrounded by all those rākṣasas, terrible to look upon, Khara went quickly to the Daṇḍaka forest, fearing nothing from any quarter. There he ruled a kingdom rid of every thorn — the harassment of the forest sages told of in the Araṇya Kāṇḍa — and Śūrpaṇakhā lived there with him in the Daṇḍaka forest. Here lie the roots of the Araṇya Kāṇḍa: Khara and Dūṣaṇa, the fourteen thousand rākṣasas and Śūrpaṇakhā all settled in Daṇḍaka, and against them Rāma would fight his first great battle, slaying the fourteen thousand alone. The sarga explains how Khara was related to Śūrpaṇakhā, and Rāvaṇa's plan was political too, for rākṣasas planted in Daṇḍaka made his frontier secure. The epithet "fearing nothing from any quarter" carries its own irony: the one who feared nothing anywhere would fall to Rāma. So this sarga joins itself to the story of the Araṇya Kāṇḍa.