लवणवधः

When he heard the great-souled Śatrughna's words, Lavaṇa flew into a fierce rage and cried, "Stand! Stand!" Grinding his hands together and gnashing his teeth, the outward signs of a rākṣasa's fury, he challenged the tiger of the Raghus again and again. To Lavaṇa, dreadful to look at, Śatrughna, slayer of the gods' enemies as his epithet declares, answered, "Śatrughna had not yet been born when you conquered those others. So today go to Yama's house, struck down by my arrows. Let the learned brahmin seers see you today, wicked one, lying slain by me in battle, as the gods saw Rāvaṇa. When you have fallen today, night-rover, burned by my arrows, there will be nothing but safety in city and countryside. Today an arrow loosed from my arm, its head like the thunderbolt, will enter your heart as a sunbeam enters a lotus." The simile is striking: a sunbeam enters the lotus gently, but this arrow would split the demon's chest. By recalling Rāvaṇa's death, Śatrughna joined his own task to Rāma's. His retort that Lavaṇa's victories over earlier heroes such as Māndhātā came before he was born is a poet's answer: past victories do not decide the future. His words are full of confidence and of the sense that he was protecting dharma.

At these words Lavaṇa, beside himself with rage, hurled a great tree at Śatrughna's chest, and Śatrughna cut it into a hundred pieces. Without his spear, Lavaṇa had only trees for weapons, which shows he was unarmed. Seeing his effort wasted, the mighty rākṣasa seized a great many more trees and hurled them at Śatrughna, and the fiery prince cut down each of the oncoming trees with three or four arrows, which shows his skill. Then Śatrughna, rich in valour, loosed a rain of arrows on the rākṣasa, but the demon was not shaken. His body was tough, and ordinary arrows could not hurt him, so the divine arrow would be needed. The fight unfolds step by step, the hurling of trees, the cutting of them, the rain of arrows, and the demon's imperviousness is frightening; the reader wonders how he can ever be killed, and the poet heightens the tension. Nor did Śatrughna use the divine arrow yet: he first fought with his own strength and kept the arrow Rāma gave him for the final blow, a mark of his restraint and composure. Fighting with trees was common to rākṣasas and monkeys, as the Yuddha Kāṇḍa also shows.

Then the mighty Lavaṇa laughed, raised a tree and struck the hero on the head, and Śatrughna's limbs went slack and he fainted. As he fell, a great cry of woe went up from the seers, the hosts of gods, the gandharvas and the apsarases, who were all watching the fight unseen and were alarmed at his fall. But here Lavaṇa's carelessness proved decisive. Thinking little of Śatrughna and taking him for dead as he lay on the ground, the rākṣasa, though he had his chance, did not go into his house or take up his spear; believing him dead, he set about gathering up his food. Had he gone in then and fetched the spear, he could not have been killed. Pride and greed destroyed him: he thought his enemy dead and his meal more important. The poet shows subtly that fate was on the side of dharma, and that even the enemy's wits were clouded; Śatrughna's swoon itself seems part of that design, for it made Lavaṇa careless. The cry of the gods and seers shows that all the worlds wanted Śatrughna to win, since Lavaṇa was the enemy of every creature. Śatrughna had said that one must never give an enemy room to move; here Lavaṇa threw away his own chance.

In a moment Śatrughna came to his senses and stood again, weapon in hand, at the city gate, honoured by the seers; Lavaṇa had still not gone back into the city. The swoon had not shaken him: he stayed at the gate, for Rāma's counsel to fight there was fixed in his memory, and the seers' honour spurred him on. Then he took up that divine, unfailing, supreme arrow Rāma had given him, blazing with energy, dreadful, filling the ten directions, its head a thunderbolt and its speed a thunderbolt's, heavy as Meru and Mandara, bent at every joint, never beaten in battle; its whole body was smeared with blood as if with sandal-paste, it was beautifully feathered, and it was terrible to the lords of the dānavas, to the great mountains and to the asuras. Seeing it, like the fire of Time blazing at the end of an age, all beings were seized with terror. The poet describes the arrow at length to establish its divinity and its terror: heavy as Meru and Mandara, like the fire of the world's dissolution. This was no ordinary arrow but the one Viṣṇu used at the beginning of creation, so even the sight of it struck fear. Here the fruit of Rāma's gift appears: Śatrughna now bore a divine weapon. He had fought first with ordinary arrows and only then taken up the divine one, as warriors should, for a divine weapon is to be used only when truly needed.

The whole world, gods, asuras and gandharvas, sages and hosts of apsarases, was thrown into distress and came before the Grandsire. They said to the boon-giving Great-grandsire, lord of the gods of gods, "The gods are bewildered with fear that the worlds are being destroyed. Has the destruction of the worlds come, lord, or the end of an age? Nothing like this has ever been seen or heard of before." When Rāvaṇa oppressed them the gods had gone to Brahmā for refuge; now they were frightened by an arrow on the side of dharma itself, a lovely paradox. Hearing them, Brahmā, Grandsire of the worlds, who takes away fear, told them in a gentle voice the cause of their fear. "Listen, all you gods. It is an arrow Śatrughna holds to slay Lavaṇa in battle, and its energy has bewildered all of you, best of gods. This is the eternal fiery arrow of the ancient god, the maker of the worlds, my children, and it is this that has frightened you. That great-souled god made this great arrow to slay the two daityas Madhu and Kaiṭabha. Viṣṇu alone knows this fiery arrow; it is the ancient body of the great-souled Viṣṇu himself. Go now, and watch the heroic, great-souled younger brother of Rāma slay Lavaṇa, the chief of rākṣasas." Brahmā confirmed what Rāma had said: the arrow was Viṣṇu's own form, and so it is suggested that Rāma himself is Viṣṇu. That even the gods did not recognise it shows how great the divine weapon was. Brahmā called them "my children" with a grandfather's tenderness, and by sending them to watch he made them witnesses, so that Lavaṇa's death, like Rāvaṇa's, took place before the gods; and Śatrughna's words, "let the seers see you slain", came true.

Hearing the words of the god of gods, the gods came to where Śatrughna and Lavaṇa were fighting. All beings saw that arrow of divine splendour in Śatrughna's hand, like the fire at the end of an age risen up. Seeing the sky filled with gods, the delight of the Raghus let out a mighty lion's roar, proclaiming his victory, and looked at Lavaṇa again. Challenged once more by the great-souled Śatrughna, Lavaṇa came forward full of anger to fight; even at the last he did not fetch his spear, but came on in blind rage. Then that finest of bowmen drew his bow to the ear, with the full strength of his archery, and loosed the great arrow at Lavaṇa's broad chest. It tore open his chest in an instant and went down into the underworld, and from there the divine arrow, worshipped by the gods, swiftly came back to the delight of the Ikṣvāku line. Returning to its holder's hand after its work is done is the mark of a divine weapon, like Lavaṇa's spear, but here on the side of dharma; and piercing the chest and then the earth itself shows its boundless power. Pierced by Śatrughna's arrow, the night-rover Lavaṇa fell suddenly to the ground like a mountain struck by a thunderbolt, his huge body lying still. The long fight with trees had achieved nothing; a single stroke of the divine arrow decided everything. Rāma's plan had succeeded completely: without his spear, outside his city, challenged at the gate, Lavaṇa was slain.

When the rākṣasa Lavaṇa was dead, that great divine spear, while all the gods looked on, went back into Rudra's keeping: the spear Śiva had given Madhu returned to its master when its holder perished, and so the terms of Śiva's boon were kept. Then the poet sings the victory in a longer metre: having struck down with a single arrow the terror of the three worlds, the hero of the Raghus, with his fine bow and arrow, shone out like the thousand-rayed sun dispelling darkness, the sun's image for his splendour and the darkness for the dark Lavaṇa he destroyed. Then the gods, the seers, the serpents and all the apsarases honoured him: "What good fortune that the son of Daśaratha has won the victory! He has cast off fear and is at peace, like a serpent grown calm." The last phrase is subtle: it may mean that Lavaṇa, once as dangerous as a snake, was stilled, or that Śatrughna, his fear gone, was at peace. So Rāma's plan, the seers' counsel, Śatrughna's valour, Viṣṇu's arrow and Śiva's limit all came together in Lavaṇa's death. This is the summit of Śatrughna's heroic story in the Uttara Kāṇḍa. Rāma slew Rāvaṇa, Lakṣmaṇa Indrajit, and now Śatrughna Lavaṇa: one after another the brothers of Raghu's line pulled out the thorns that plagued the world. Bharata had first pledged to kill Lavaṇa, and Śatrughna had taken the burden on himself; now his pledge was fulfilled and Rāma's trust vindicated, and the fear of the seers of the Yamunā, who had honoured Śatrughna at the gate, was over.