देवान्तकत्रिशिरोमहोदरमहापार्श्ववधः

In the previous sarga Aṅgada had killed Narāntaka, and when the rākṣasas saw him lying dead a great cry went up through their ranks. The bulls among the Nairṛtas shouted aloud: Devāntaka, three-headed Triśiras, and Mahodara of Pulastya's line. Devāntaka and Triśiras were sons of Rāvaṇa and brothers of the fallen Narāntaka, while Mahodara was Rāvaṇa's brother and so their uncle; their grief and their anger both sprang from the loss of one of their own. Mahodara went first, mounted on a lordly elephant dark as a cloud, and charged swiftly at Vāli's mighty son. Then Devāntaka, burning with grief at his brother's fall, took up a terrible iron club and ran at Aṅgada on foot. And the hero Triśiras mounted a chariot bright as the sun, yoked with the finest horses, and bore down on him as well. So three rākṣasas, in three different ways, on an elephant, on foot and by chariot, closed round a single Aṅgada; since it was he who had killed Narāntaka, their fury had only one target. Even their mounts show what kind of warriors they were: Mahodara riding his elephant, Triśiras the chariot-fighter, Devāntaka the foot-soldier with his club. By the end of this sarga all four of the rākṣasa champions named here will be dead.

Though he was set upon by three lords of the rākṣasas who could crush the pride of the gods themselves, Aṅgada felt no fear. He tore up a great tree with spreading boughs and hurled it with sudden force at Devāntaka, as Śakra hurls his blazing thunderbolt at an enemy. But Triśiras cut the tree apart in mid-flight with arrows like venomous serpents. Seeing it cut down, Aṅgada leapt up, and that elephant among monkeys rained down trees and rocks; Triśiras in his fury cut all of them to pieces with sharp arrows, and the trees that were left Mahodara smashed with the head of his club. Triśiras then pressed in on the hero with his shafts, and Mahodara, driving his elephant at him, struck Vāli's son full on the chest with iron lances like thunderbolts. The unevenness of the fight is plain: one monkey stood against three armed warriors, with nothing but trees and stones against their arrows, club, lances, elephant and chariot. Yet Aṅgada did not give ground, and it is here that his courage shows. The image of Śakra and his thunderbolt sets the monkey beside the king of the gods and his tree beside the thunderbolt, as if to say that his strength was no less than Indra's. Triśiras's arrows are like venomous snakes, swift and deadly, and Mahodara's lances are like thunderbolts, so that the weapons on both sides are likened to the thunderbolt and the fierceness of the struggle comes through. Mahodara, charging with his elephant, used even the beast itself as a weapon.

Devāntaka in his rage came up to Aṅgada, struck him quickly with his club, and sprang back out of reach. Yet although the three foremost Nairṛtas were attacking him at once, Vāli's glorious and valiant son did not waver, and fear found no way into his mind. Gathering all his speed, that all but invincible hero rushed in and struck Mahodara's great elephant with the flat of his hand. At that blow both eyes of the lordly beast fell out, and the elephant died on the spot. Then Vāli's mighty son wrenched a tusk from the dead elephant, ran at Devāntaka, and struck him with it. The glorious Devāntaka reeled like a tree shaken by the wind, and blood the colour of lac poured from his body in a great stream. Recovering with difficulty, the mighty rākṣasa whirled his club and brought it down on Aṅgada with all his force. Struck by the club, the son of the monkey king fell to his knees on the ground, but at once he sprang up again; his fall lasted only a moment. Seizing the enemy's own weapon and turning it on the enemy is a device this sarga uses again and again: Aṅgada fights with the elephant's tusk, Hanumān will kill Triśiras with his own sword, and Ṛṣabha will kill Mahāpārśva with his own mace. In this way the monkeys make up for having no weapons of their own. That a slap of Aṅgada's hand could knock out an elephant's eyes shows how great his strength was, and the blow with the tusk is fitting too, for the weapon that had belonged to the enemy's mount was used to strike the enemy himself. Devāntaka is called glorious, mighty and powerful again and again, and the stronger the foe, the greater Aṅgada's honour in overcoming him. His falling to his knees and springing straight back up is a sign of the monkey's toughness.

As Aṅgada sprang up, Triśiras struck the son of the monkey lord on the forehead with three terrible straight-flying arrows. Then Hanumān and Nīla, seeing Aṅgada hemmed in by the three bulls among the Nairṛtas, set out to help him, and the fight was no longer one against three. They went of their own accord, with no one ordering them; this is the duty of comrades. Nīla hurled a great mountain peak at Triśiras, but the wise son of Rāvaṇa split it apart with sharp arrows, and the mountain's crest, pierced by hundreds of arrows and its rocky face shattered, fell to the ground amid sparks and flames; the very friction of the arrows set it alight, which shows their speed and hardness. Seeing his brother's prowess thus displayed, when Triśiras shattered Nīla's rock, the mighty Devāntaka was delighted, raised his club, and rushed at the son of the Wind. As he came on, Hanumān, elephant among monkeys, leapt up and struck him on the head with a fist hard as a thunderbolt. The mighty hero struck him on the head, and with his great roar he made every rākṣasa tremble. His head crushed and split open by that fist, his teeth and eyes driven out and his tongue lolling, Devāntaka, son of the rākṣasa king, fell lifeless to the earth at once. The poet marks this first death of the fight with a verse in a longer metre. To kill a club-bearing champion with a single blow of the fist is proof of Hanumān's matchless strength. From here the shape of the battle changes: Aṅgada is no longer alone, for Hanumān and Nīla are at his side, and the deaths that follow come at the hands of different monkeys, Devāntaka by Hanumān, Mahodara by Nīla, Triśiras again by Hanumān, and finally Mahāpārśva by Ṛṣabha.

When Devāntaka, chief of the rākṣasa warriors and mighty enemy of the gods, had fallen, the three-headed Triśiras in his fury poured a fierce rain of sharp-pointed arrows on Nīla's chest. Mahodara too, enraged, quickly mounted a second elephant, huge as a mountain, as the rayed sun climbs Mount Mandara, and rained a shower of arrows down on Nīla, like a cloud with lightning and rainbow pouring rain upon a mountain; in these images the elephant is the mountain and Mahodara the sun, his arrows the lightning and his bow the rainbow. Drenched by floods of arrows and pierced in every limb, Nīla, commander of the monkey host, was stunned by that mighty foe, and for a moment his limbs went slack. But the numbness passed. Coming to himself, Nīla tore up a crag together with its clump of trees, leapt up with fearful speed, and brought it down on Mahodara's head. Shattered by the falling crag, Mahodara, stunned and lifeless, crashed to the ground together with his great elephant, like a mountain struck by a thunderbolt, and so the second rākṣasa hero fell. Aṅgada had already killed his first elephant, which is why he had mounted another; now this one too perished with him. The image of the mountain struck by the thunderbolt recalls the fall of Narāntaka in the sarga before.

Seeing his uncle Mahodara slain, Triśiras took up his bow and in his fury pierced Hanumān with sharp arrows. The son of the Wind, angered, hurled a mountain peak at him, and the mighty Triśiras split it into many pieces with his keen arrows. When he saw the peak made useless, the monkey loosed a shower of trees at Rāvaṇa's son, and as they came through the sky the valiant Triśiras cut them all apart with sharp arrows and roared in triumph; once again the unarmed fought against the armed. Then Hanumān leapt up and tore Triśiras's horse with his nails, as an angry lion, king of beasts, tears a lordly elephant. At that the son of Rāvaṇa seized a javelin and hurled it at the son of the Wind, as Death sends forth the Night of Doom, the night at the end of the world that is his weapon. That javelin, flying like a meteor flung from the sky and checked by nothing in its path, the tiger among monkeys caught in his hand, broke, and roared, a feat that shows his more than earthly strength. When the troops of monkeys saw that dreadful weapon broken, they roared with joy like thunderclouds. Then Triśiras, best of rākṣasas, raised his sword and plunged it into Hanumān's chest. Even with the blade in his chest Hanumān did not fall or falter, as if his body were made of adamant; the valiant son of the Wind simply struck the three-headed rākṣasa on the chest with his open palm. At that blow the weapon slipped from the rākṣasa's hand, and the glorious Triśiras fell senseless to the ground. As he fell, the great monkey, huge as a mountain, snatched away his sword and roared, and his roar alone terrified all the rākṣasas. Unable to bear that roar, the night-ranger leapt up again and struck Hanumān with his fist; even on the edge of death his pride had not cooled. At that blow the great monkey blazed up in anger, seized the bull among rākṣasas by his crown, and with that same sharp sword cut off his three heads, crowned and hung with earrings, as Śakra long ago cut off the three heads of Viśvarūpa, the son of Tvaṣṭṛ. Triśiras had three heads and so had Viśvarūpa, so the comparison fits exactly: Hanumān stands in Indra's place and Triśiras in Viśvarūpa's, and that is why he is called Hanumān whose valour was Śakra's. Seizing a foe by the crown to behead him was a death of dishonour as well. The heads of Indra's foe, wide-eyed, huge as mountains, their eyes blazing like fire, fell to the earth like stars loosed from the path of the sun. When the three-headed enemy of the gods was slain, the monkeys roared, the earth shook, and the rākṣasas fled on every side. Of Rāvaṇa's four sons in this fight, three were now dead. The poet traces the course of this duel with care. First they fought at a distance, with arrows, peaks and trees; then close in, as Hanumān's nails tore the horse; then came the javelin, caught and broken by hand; then the sword; then blows of palm and fist; and last the beheading with the enemy's own blade. Step by step the distance shrank and the fighting grew more terrible. Nor was Triśiras a weak opponent: he cut down Hanumān's peak and his rain of trees, used javelin and sword, and even after falling rose to strike with his fist, so that he was hard to kill and Hanumān's victory all the more praiseworthy. The poet raises the killing to a solemn height by closing it in a longer metre.

Seeing Triśiras slain, and Mahodara too, and seeing the unassailable Devāntaka and Narāntaka killed, Matta, a bull among rākṣasas and supremely wrathful, flew into a rage. Matta and Mattānīka are names for Mahāpārśva, and he too was a brother of Rāvaṇa, his younger brother, as Ṛṣabha's approach to "Rāvaṇa's younger brother" makes clear. He seized a flaming mace made wholly of iron, and the poet lingers over it through four quarter-verses: bound with bands of gold, frothing with flesh and blood, gleaming and huge, sated with the blood of foes, its head ablaze with radiance and decked with red garlands, a terror even to Airāvata, Mahāpadma and Sārvabhauma, the great elephants who guard the quarters of the world. That it frightened even them shows the mace's more than earthly power; Rāvaṇa had once conquered the elephants of the quarters in his campaign of world-conquest, and his brother was of the same stamp. The long description tells how fearsome the weapon was, and it will be this very mace that brings about its owner's end. Taking it up in his fury, the bull among rākṣasas rushed at the monkeys, blazing like the fire at the end of an age, ready to burn up everything. Then the monkey Ṛṣabha leapt forward, came up to Mattānīka, and stood his ground before him, mighty and unmoving as a mountain, instead of running away. Seeing the monkey standing before him like a mountain, the rākṣasa struck him on the chest with his mace, hard as a thunderbolt. Struck by that mace, the bull among monkeys, his chest split open and his whole body shaking, poured out a great deal of blood. After a long while Ṛṣabha, lord of monkeys, came back to his senses, and glared at Mahāpārśva with quivering lips, a sign of his fury.

Then Ṛṣabha, huge as a mountain, swift, and chief among the monkey heroes, rushed at the rākṣasa, clenched his fist, and struck him suddenly full on the chest. Like a tree cut at the root, the rākṣasa fell at once to the ground, his limbs bathed in blood, and Ṛṣabha seized his terrible mace, like the rod of Yama, and roared. For a moment the enemy of the gods lay as if dead; then, coming to himself, he leapt up and, red as an evening cloud, struck Ṛṣabha, the son of Varuṇa, lord of the waters. The Bāla Kāṇḍa tells that the chief monkeys of the army were born from portions of the gods, so Ṛṣabha's strength too was divine. Ṛṣabha fell senseless to the ground; after a moment he rose, conscious again, whirled that very mace, massive as the greatest of mountains, and struck the rākṣasa with it. That dreadful mace reached the body of the dreadful foe of gods, sacrifices and brahmins, a title that reminds us of his wickedness, and split his chest, and he poured out blood in streams, as the king of mountains pours out water red with minerals. The rākṣasa rushed at the great-souled monkey to snatch back his own mace from his hand, but Ṛṣabha gripped the terrible weapon, whirled it again and again, and struck Mattānīka at the forefront of the battle. Broken by his own mace, his teeth and eyes shattered, Matta fell like a mountain struck by a thunderbolt. "Broken by his own mace" gathers up the sense of the whole sarga: the rākṣasas' own weapons became the means of their destruction. When that rākṣasa fell, his eyes destroyed and his strength and life gone, the rākṣasa army broke and ran. With Rāvaṇa's brother slain, the host of the Nairṛtas, vast as an ocean, threw away its weapons and fled only to save their lives, like a sea that has burst its shore and floods out on every side. So in a single sarga four rākṣasa heroes were slain.