सुग्रीवरावणयोर्नियुद्धम्

Then Rāma, with Sugrīva and the monkey troops, climbed to the very summit of Suvela, two yojanas round. Standing there a moment and looking out over the ten directions, he saw Laṅkā on a lovely peak of Trikūṭa — built by Viśvakarman, finely laid out and beautiful with charming woods. And on top of its gate-tower he saw Rāvaṇa himself, the unapproachable king of the rākṣasas. White yak-tail whisks were waved on either side of him, and the parasol of victory shone over his head. His body was smeared with red sandal and decked with jewelled ornaments. Dark as a rain-cloud, in garments worked with gold, his chest deeply scarred by the tusk-tips of Airāvata, wrapped in a cloth as red as a hare's blood, he looked like a mass of cloud in the sky overspread with the glow of sunset. The poet shows at once Rāvaṇa's royal splendour and the marks of his old victories: the scars from the tusks of Airāvata, Indra's elephant, bear witness to his wars with the gods. The white whisks and the parasol of victory are the insignia of a king. Red is everywhere — red sandal, red cloth, the red of a hare's blood — hinting at the bloodshed to come, and the image of a cloud at sunset joins his dark body and red dress in one picture. Rāvaṇa sits fearless at the highest point of his city, because he thinks his enemies no more than straws, and that very arrogance brings on what follows. Rāma sees his enemy from afar and stays calm; Sugrīva, close beside him, is enraged at the mere sight — the difference in their natures is plain.

As the monkey chiefs and Rāghava himself looked on, Sugrīva, at the sight of the rākṣasa king, suddenly sprang up. Filled with the force of his rage, with courage and with strength, he rose from the mountain top and leapt onto the gate-tower. He stood there a moment, looked at the rākṣasa fearlessly, and, counting him no more than a straw, spoke harshly: "Rākṣasa, I am the friend and servant of Rāma, lord of the worlds. By the power of that king of kings, you will not escape me today." With that he suddenly leapt on him, tore off his splendid crown and flung it to the ground. Seeing him come on so fast, the night-ranger said, "While you were out of my sight you were Sugrīva, 'the fine-necked'; now you will have no neck at all." With these words he rose, seized him quickly in both arms and dashed him down on the floor; and the monkey bounced up like a ball and dashed him down in turn. Rāvaṇa's threat is a pun on Sugrīva's name: "fine-necked" now, he will soon be neckless. Sugrīva calls himself Rāma's "friend and servant," and counts both his friendship and his service to Rāma as his glory. Knocking off a king's crown is the ultimate insult: as Hanūmān had humiliated Rāvaṇa in the Sundara Kāṇḍa, so Sugrīva does here. "Like a ball" shows how nimble he was — thrown to the ground, he sprang straight back up. Sugrīva does all this without Rāma's leave, and in the next sarga Rāma reproaches him for it. The root of his fury is the sight of Rāvaṇa himself: he cannot bear to see the man who stole his friend's wife. He had fought Vālin hand to hand before, so he threw himself into the wrestling without hesitation. Rāvaṇa's threat shows his arrogance, Sugrīva's deed his fearlessness.

Their limbs smeared with each other's sweat and their bodies red with each other's blood, each locked in the other's grip and held motionless, they looked like a silk-cotton tree and a kiṃśuka in flower. With blows of their fists and slaps of their palms, with strokes of their forearms and elbows and jabs of their fingertips, the mighty kings of the rākṣasas and of the monkeys fought a fight too terrible to watch. Fierce and fast, they wrestled a long time in the middle of the gate-tower's platform, lifting each other again and again and bending their bodies, until their footwork brought them up against its edge. Crushing each other, their bodies interlocked, they fell into the space between the rampart and the moat; they lay a moment on the ground, gasping, and then sprang up again. Clasping and clasping again, they bound each other in the ropes of their arms, and full of fury, training and strength they moved through the many ways of combat. Like a tiger and a lion with new-grown fangs, like two young elephants locked together, they grappled with their hands, strained against each other and fell to the ground together. Lifting each other and hurling each other down, they went through many ways of fighting; both were hardened by exercise, training and strength, and neither soon grew tired. Warding each other off with their fine arms like elephants' trunks, as elephants fend off a rival, they fought hard and long and circled swiftly round each other. Closing in, each bent on killing the other, they stood poised again and again like two cats over a piece of food. In this passage the poet uses quick-moving metres to convey the speed and rush of the wrestling, and the repeated "each other" shows that the two were equally matched. The red flowers of the silk-cotton and kiṃśuka trees are the image for the two heroes drenched in blood. The cats show them watching each other warily, looking for an opening before they strike. "Smeared with sweat," "red with blood" speak of a long and exhausting fight, yet "neither grew tired" praises the endurance of both. Their fall between rampart and moat and their rising again show the fight moving — begun on top of the gate-tower, it spread down to the ground. The young elephants suggest their youthful vigour, the tiger and lion their ferocity. With so many images in one episode the poet paints the many faces of the fight and makes the reader's hair stand on end. This is the first direct clash between monkey and rākṣasa, a foretaste of the great war to come.

Masters of the ways of combat, the monkey king and Rāvaṇa moved against each other through every form of wrestling: varied circling moves and many stances, zigzags like the wavy track of a cow's urine, advances and retreats, sideways and crooked movements, slipping blows, dodging and running round, rushing in, springing, standing firm in the clinch, turning about, turning away, running off and leaping down, closing in and drawing back. This is a list of the technical terms of the wrestler's art — now running round the opponent, now charging straight at him, now dropping down with a leap, now wheeling round behind, now stretching the arms out, now drawing them in. The poet shows here a learned knowledge of the art of fighting, which makes clear that the two combatants were equally skilled. So this was a contest not only of strength but of training: Sugrīva, monkey though he was, was Rāvaṇa's equal in the wrestler's art, and the outcome could not be decided by strength alone.

Meanwhile Rāvaṇa began to call on his own power of illusion. The monkey king saw it, and, triumphant and unwearied, sprang into the sky, while Rāvaṇa was left standing where he was, outwitted by the king of the monkeys. Then Sugrīva, the Sun's son, lord of the best of monkeys, having won fame in battle and worn out the lord of the night-rangers in the fight, crossed the vast sky and came back to Rāma's side in the midst of the monkey host. Having done that deed, the Sun's son, swift as the wind, rejoined the army in high delight, adding to the joy of battle of Rāma, prince of the Raghus, and honoured by the chiefs of the monkey hordes. Sugrīva's good sense deserves praise here: knowing that in a battle of magic Rāvaṇa would have the upper hand, he withdrew at just the right moment. "Triumphant" means radiant with victory, and "unwearied" means he had overcome his fatigue. The closing verses, in a graceful longer metre, twice call him the Sun's son, reminding us of his father. His bold deed bore double fruit: Rāvaṇa was humiliated, and the monkeys' spirits rose. And Rāvaṇa's resort to magic reveals his weakness too: seeing himself losing a fair fight, he turns to trickery, as Indrajit too will do later.