कुम्भकर्णस्य रणयात्रा

So addressed, Kumbhakarṇa rebuked Mahodara and then spoke to his brother Rāvaṇa, first of the rākṣasas: "This very day I will wipe away your dreadful fear by killing that wicked Rāma. Be free of your enemy and be happy. Heroes do not thunder in vain like clouds without water; watch my roaring made good in battle by deeds." A cloud that only thunders and never rains is useless, and so is a man who only talks and never acts. "Heroes cannot bear to praise themselves; without any show, they do what is hard to do." Kumbhakarṇa did not argue point by point against Mahodara's trick, but by saying that heroes do not bluster he branded that path of deceit as the way of cowards; for him battle was a hero's duty and trickery a coward's. There is a quiet irony here, for he himself had praised himself at length in the sarga before. Then he turned on Mahodara to his face: "Your words, Mahodara, always please kings who are timid and foolish and think themselves wise. You cowards in battle, forever saying pleasant things and trailing after the king, have ruined every undertaking. Laṅkā has been left with nothing but its king; the treasury is exhausted and the army destroyed — this is what you have done, fastening on this king, you enemies dressed as friends. Now I go out to battle, ready to conquer the enemy, to set right today in this great fight the harm your bad policy has done." "Nothing but its king" is a pitiful phrase, as if no one else were left. Calling Mahodara and his like enemies who look like friends recalls his earlier account of bad ministers. By laying the blame on the ministers rather than the king, he protected his brother's dignity; the ruined treasury and army, which Rāvaṇa himself had admitted, he set down to their account. So he told the truth without insulting the king, as a skilful speaker should, and with a single speech swept Mahodara's trick aside. His aim was still his brother's happiness, as when he had told him to enjoy himself and drink; and his ideal was the hero's — few words before the deed, and a great deed.

When wise Kumbhakarṇa had spoken, the lord of the rākṣasas laughed and answered: "This Mahodara is terrified of Rāma, no doubt of it; that is why he has no taste for battle, my dear brother, skilled in war as you are. No one is your equal in love or in strength. Go, Kumbhakarṇa, to kill the enemy and to win. You were sleeping, and I woke you to destroy the enemy; this is the great hour of the rākṣasas, subduer of foes. Go, take up your spear like Death with his noose in hand, and devour the monkeys and the two princes, brilliant as the sun. When the monkeys see your form they will scatter, and the hearts of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa will burst." Rāvaṇa did not side with Mahodara; in a moment he had swung to Kumbhakarṇa's side, which shows how unsteady his mind was — a moment before Mahodara's plan had seemed to please him, now it was Kumbhakarṇa's courage. He mocked Mahodara's fear though he had been afraid himself. His praise, "no one is your equal in love or in strength", touched Kumbhakarṇa's heart, and his hope that the mere sight of him would kill the enemy was wildly overblown. The image of Death with his noose is answered at the end of the sarga by the image of Yama with his staff, closing the circle. Having said this to mighty Kumbhakarṇa, the glorious bull among rākṣasas felt as if he had been born again — his despair had turned to hope. Knowing Kumbhakarṇa's strength and prowess, the king grew as happy and clear as the spotless moon, like the moon freed from the eclipse of care. Addressed in this way, the mighty one was delighted, and hearing the king's words he went out eager to fight.

The destroyer of his enemies swiftly took up his sharp spear. The poet describes it with a whole garland of epithets, until the weapon itself seems a living character: all of black iron, blazing, adorned with refined gold, bright as Indra's thunderbolt and as heavy as the vajra, the slayer of gods and dānavas, gandharvas, yakṣas and serpents — recalling his old victories, which Vibhīṣaṇa too had described — hung with great garlands of red flowers, spitting fire of its own accord, stained with the blood of enemies. All this foretells the fierceness of the fight to come. Taking up that huge spear, mighty Kumbhakarṇa said to Rāvaṇa: "I will go alone; let my army stay here. Today, hungry and enraged, I will devour those monkeys." Hunger and anger, the two sides of his nature, drove him to battle, and going alone was the very limit of his confidence — the thing Mahodara had condemned. Hearing him, Rāvaṇa said: "Go surrounded by troops with spears and hammers in their hands. The monkeys are high-spirited, brave and resolute; if they find you alone or off your guard, they could bring you down with their teeth. So go surrounded by troops, invincible one, and wipe out the whole enemy side that works the rākṣasas' harm." Here Rāvaṇa showed good sense; he knew the combined strength of the monkeys, and Mahodara's warning echoed in his words — even a lone hero can be overwhelmed by many. His "off your guard" hints at Kumbhakarṇa's drinking too, for he went out tipsy. Kumbhakarṇa's vow to go alone shows his natural courage; Rāvaṇa's order to go with an army shows his statecraft; and in their exchange love and caution mingle, for Rāvaṇa counted him priceless and wanted to protect him — he was his last hope.

Then Rāvaṇa sprang up from his seat and with his own hands fastened on Kumbhakarṇa a garland studded with gems. He put armlets on the great warrior, rings and fine ornaments, and a necklace bright as the moon; he set fragrant heavenly garlands on his limbs and a pair of earrings in his ears. That the king should dress his brother himself was a mark of his love and respect, the honour paid of old by a king to a beloved warrior he sends to war. Adorned with golden armlets, bracelets and necklaces, the long-eared Kumbhakarṇa shone like a fire well fed with oblations — and a sacrificial fire consumes its offerings, as Kumbhakarṇa was going out to consume the monkeys. He gleamed with a great dark girdle round his hips, like Mount Mandara bound with the serpent Vāsuki at the churning of the ocean for the nectar; the image shows at once the breadth of his hips and the darkness of the girdle, and recalls a mighty labour. Putting on a golden coat of mail that could bear heavy blows and no weapon could pierce, flashing like lightning and blazing as if with its own light, he shone like the king of mountains wrapped in evening clouds, gold and red on a dark mountain as the golden armour glowed on his dark body. His whole body decked with every ornament, spear in hand, the rākṣasa looked like Nārāyaṇa setting out to take his three strides — the image Rāma himself had used when he first saw him, the poet's favourite for his enormous size. The adorning — garland, armlets, necklace, earrings, girdle, armour — was as solemn as a royal consecration.

The mighty rākṣasa embraced his brother, walked round him in reverence and bowed his head to him, and then set out; even a cruel rākṣasa was humble before his elder and kept the customs of his house. Rāvaṇa sent him off with auspicious blessings, with the blare of conches and drums, and with troops carrying fine weapons. Great-hearted chariot-fighters followed that best of chariot-fighters with elephants, horses and chariots rumbling like clouds, and other rākṣasas followed the fearsome, mighty Kumbhakarṇa riding on serpents, camels and donkeys, on lions, elephants, deer and birds — a strange and terrible host. Showered with flowers, a parasol held over him, sharp spear in hand, the enemy of dānavas and gods marched out, wild with drink and maddened by the smell of blood, his rākṣasa nature laid bare. Many foot-soldiers followed him, mighty and loud-roaring, terrible rākṣasas with dreadful eyes and weapons in hand, red-eyed, many fathoms tall — a fathom being the span of a man's outstretched arms — and dark as heaps of collyrium, brandishing spears, swords, sharp axes, javelins, iron bars, maces and pestles, huge palm trunks and missiles no one could withstand. Then mighty, glorious Kumbhakarṇa took on another body, cruel and dreadful to look at, and sprang forward; rākṣasas can take what shape they please, and on the battlefield he swelled his body to many times its size, to deepen the monkeys' terror. He was a hundred bows broad and six hundred bows high, terrible, with eyes like cartwheels, like a great mountain. Gathering the rākṣasas round him, huge-mouthed Kumbhakarṇa, black as a burnt mountain, laughed and said: "Today in my fury I will burn up the troops of the monkey leaders one after another, as a fire burns moths." The poet paints his form in the mood of terror, and to him the monkeys' destruction seemed as easy as moths in a flame.

"And yet the monkeys who roam the forests do me no wrong; their kind is an ornament to the gardens of cities like ours. The root of this siege is Rāghava, with Lakṣmaṇa. Kill him and all is killed; I will slay him in battle." Here his judgement shows again: he thought the monkeys blameless, no more than ornaments of a garden, and Rāma the real enemy. There is strategy in it — kill the leader and the army perishes of itself, so he meant not to waste his strength on the monkeys — and there is irony, for he had vowed a moment before to eat them. As Kumbhakarṇa spoke, the rākṣasas let out a tremendous roar, as if to shake the ocean. But as the wise Kumbhakarṇa rushed out, terrible omens appeared on every side. Clouds grey as donkeys gathered, full of meteors and thunderbolts, and the earth shook with its seas and forests. Jackals of dreadful aspect howled with flames spitting from their mouths, and birds wheeled round from right to left. A vulture settled on his spear as he went along the road — the weapon itself touched by the sign of death. His left eye throbbed and his left arm trembled, which everyone knows is an ill sign for a man. A blazing meteor fell with a fearful roar; the sun lost its light, and no pleasant breeze blew. The omens were everywhere — in the sky, on the earth, among beasts and birds, in his own body — and all of them pointed to his coming death. In the Rāmāyaṇa such portents come before the deaths of great warriors, Khara, Prahasta and in the end Rāvaṇa too, and here there are more than ever, so the poet prepares his listeners in advance. Vulture, jackals and meteor were like messengers of death, and he ignored them all. Heedless of these great, hair-raising portents, Kumbhakarṇa went out, driven by the power of Death — it was fate itself that drove him, and a man who does not heed the omens does not see what fate holds. His ignoring them was the fruit of his pride.

Huge as a mountain, he stepped over the rampart on foot — the wall the monkeys could hardly climb was a single stride for him — and saw the wondrous monkey army spread out like a mass of clouds. When the monkeys saw that mountain-like chief of the rākṣasas, they scattered in every direction like clouds driven by the wind. Seeing that fierce army breaking and fleeing on all sides like a torn bank of cloud, Kumbhakarṇa, dark as a cloud, roared again and again for joy like a thundercloud. The cloud image comes three times: the monkey army massed like clouds, the monkeys scattering like wind-driven clouds, Kumbhakarṇa roaring like a cloud; between the massed cloud and the broken one the first moment of the battle is told. Hearing his dreadful roar, like the thunder of a rain-cloud in the sky, many monkeys fell to the ground like sāl trees cut at the root, suddenly and utterly helpless. Vibhīṣaṇa's device of calling him a machine now seemed to fail, for his roar alone was felling the monkeys. Armed with a huge iron bar, great Kumbhakarṇa went out to destroy his enemies, striking terror into the monkey hosts like Yama, lord of death, with his servants and his staff at the end of an age — an image that foretells the slaughter to come. His joy seemed the beginning of his victory. So ends Kumbhakarṇa's march to battle; in the next sarga the fighting begins, with Aṅgada rallying the fleeing monkeys.