रावणस्य पुत्रशोकः सीतावधोद्यमः सुपार्श्वेन निवारणं च

When Paulastya's ministers heard of Indrajit's death and had made sure of it, they hurried to tell ten-necked Rāvaṇa. "Great king," they said, "your glorious son has been slain in battle by Lakṣmaṇa, with Vibhīṣaṇa's help, before our very eyes. Your son, a hero never defeated in battle, the conqueror of the lord of the gods, met a hero in Lakṣmaṇa and was slain by him. He has gone to the highest worlds, after sating Lakṣmaṇa with his arrows." The ministers tried to soften the news, speaking of the hero's good destiny, of the arrows he had given, and of his having fallen to a true hero and not to some weakling; perhaps they were protecting themselves too, since the bearer of bad news is often punished. Yet the words "with Vibhīṣaṇa's help" would stir in Rāvaṇa the memory of his brother's betrayal, and "before our very eyes" betrays their shame at having watched without being able to save him. Hearing of the dreadful, terrifying death of his son Indrajit in battle, Rāvaṇa fell into a deep swoon, which shows how deep a hard father's love could run. After a long while the king, bull among rākṣasas, came to his senses, wretched and distracted with grief for his son. So his grieving began.

His senses in turmoil, he lamented: "Alas, leader of the rākṣasa host, my child, my mighty one! You conquered Indra; how have you fallen today into Lakṣmaṇa's power? In your fury your arrows could have split even Kāla and the Ender, even the peaks of Mandara, let alone Lakṣmaṇa in battle! Today King Vaivasvata, Yama, stands higher in my esteem, since he has joined you, mighty-armed, to the law of death" — bitterly meaning that whoever could kill his son must indeed be great. "Still, this is the path of good warriors, even among the immortals: the man who is slain for his master's sake goes to heaven. Today all the hosts of gods, the guardians of the world and the great sages will hear that Indrajit is dead and sleep in peace, free of fear. Today the three worlds entire and the earth with its forests seem empty to me, bereft of Indrajit alone. Today I shall hear the wailing of the nairṛta women in the inner apartments, like the cry of a herd of she-elephants in a mountain cave. Where have you gone, scorcher of foes, leaving behind your place as heir, Laṅkā, the rākṣasas, your mother, me and your wives? It was for you, hero, to perform my funeral rites when I went to Yama's abode, but you have turned things the other way about. While Sugrīva lives, and Lakṣmaṇa and Rāghava, where have you gone without drawing out the dart that is in me?" The lament lays bare a father's heart. Rāvaṇa recalls his son's might, that he had conquered Indra and could have pierced even Kāla and the Ender, so that his death at Lakṣmaṇa's hands is beyond belief to him. He tries to console himself that a hero's death leads to heaven, but his grief does not abate. He imagines the gods sleeping easy at last, as they could not while Indrajit lived, and the thought sharpens his pain; he already hears the women's cries in the palace. Without its crown prince Laṅkā's future is uncertain, and his mother Mandodarī, his father and his wives are left without a protector; Rāvaṇa counts them over one by one. "You have turned things the other way about" holds the grief of every father, for it is the son who should perform the father's last rites, not the father the son's; Rāvaṇa sees the natural order of life broken. And the dart he speaks of is the feud born of Sītā's abduction, still unsettled.

As the lord of the rākṣasas lamented in this way, a great rage born of the loss of his son took hold of him. He was irascible by nature, and his agonies over his son set him further ablaze, as its rays inflame the sun in the hot season: anger was his nature, and grief was only fuel for it. With his brows knitted on his forehead he looked like the ocean at the end of an age, with its crocodiles and great waves. As he yawned in his rage, a smoking fire leapt from his mouth, blazing plainly, as from the mouth of Vṛtra. Burning at his son's death and overcome by fury, the hero turned it over in his mind and settled on killing Vaidehī; here the seed of the attempt on Sītā's life is sown. His eyes, red by nature and red now with the fire of his rage as well, became dreadful and blazing. His form, terrible by nature, now inflamed by his anger, became as unapproachable as Rudra's in wrath. Tears fell from his furious eyes like drops of oil with their flames from two blazing lamps, a striking image in which grief and rage come together and even his tears are fire. When he ground his teeth the sound was like the churning apparatus hauled by the dānavas when the ocean was churned. Raging like the fire at the end of time, he looked about him, and in whatever quarter he looked the rākṣasas hid themselves in terror; like the Ender in his wrath, eager to devour all that moves and does not move, he glared in every direction, and not even his own people dared go near him, as creatures shrink at the dissolution of the world. The poet lists the bodily signs of wrath one after another, the knitted brows, the fire from the mouth, the red eyes, the tears, the grinding teeth, the look that terrifies, and piles up images of destruction: the summer sun, the ocean at the end of an age, Vṛtra's mouth, Rudra, the fire of time, the Ender. Grief for his son was turning Rāvaṇa into a destroyer. So far he says nothing; the poet shows his state before his words, so that the words will strike the harder. Then, at the height of his fury, the lord of the rākṣasas spoke in the midst of the rākṣasas, wishing to steady them for battle, for even in grief the king was still the leader of his army. The movement of a mind falling is plain here: from grief comes anger, from anger delusion, and from delusion an unrighteous resolve.

"For thousands of years," Rāvaṇa said, "I practised the highest austerities, and on those several occasions I gratified the Self-born Brahmā. By the fruit of that austerity and by Svayaṃbhū's grace I have no fear at all of asuras or gods. The armour Brahmā gave me shines like the sun, and in the battles of gods and asuras the blows of the thunderbolt never cut it. Clad in it and standing in my chariot in the battle today, who will face me, even Purandara himself? And the great bow with its arrows that Svayaṃbhū, well pleased, gave me in those same battles of gods and asuras: let that fearsome bow be brought out today to the sound of a hundred trumpets, for the slaying of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in the great battle." Rāvaṇa calls to mind the fruits of his austerities: his armour, his bow and his freedom from fear. His penance was famous; the Uttara Kāṇḍa tells how he practised it for ten thousand years and offered one of his heads into the fire at the end of every thousand, and "on those several occasions" points to that. His armour could not be pierced even by Indra's thunderbolt, and on armour and bow he now relies, for in Indrajit's place he will fight in person. His confidence comes from the power of his austerities; yet Brahmā's boon protected him only from gods and asuras, not from men, as the rākṣasīs will recall in the next sarga. The hundred trumpets add grandeur to the bow and make the march to war a festival. His words were also meant to put heart into his soldiers, who were frightened by Indrajit's death: I myself am safe even from Indra, he tells them, so do not be afraid. Here grief for his son is turning into revenge.

Burning at his son's death, cruel and overcome by rage, Rāvaṇa thought it over and resolved to kill Sītā. Copper-eyed, very dreadful and terrible to see, yet wretched, he looked round at the night-rangers, whose voices were as wretched as his own, for all were stricken with grief, and said: "To deceive the forest-dwellers my child killed some figure by magic and showed it to them as Sītā. That I shall now make true, and please myself as well: I shall destroy Vaidehī, who clings to that sorry kṣatriya." Indrajit had killed the illusory Sītā to bewilder the monkeys; now Rāvaṇa wants to make it real, such is the blindness of revenge, and "sorry kṣatriya" is his sneer at Rāma. Having said this to his ministers, he quickly seized and drew his sword, a blade of every excellence gleaming like a clear sky; the purity of the blade throws into relief the foulness of his purpose. His mind utterly distraught with grief, Rāvaṇa rushed out, with his wives following him, perhaps to hold him back, and surrounded by his ministers. Sword in hand, he went straight to where Maithilī was. Seeing him go, the ministers raised a lion's roar, and embracing one another they said: "Today when those two brothers see him they will tremble. In his wrath he conquered the four guardians of the world and struck down many other enemies in battle. Rāvaṇa has seized the treasures of the three worlds and enjoys them; in valour and strength there is no one like him on earth." Strangely, they roared not to stop him but to egg him on: they praised his strength and imagined the brothers' dismay, but none spoke of the sin of killing a woman. That shows how far the rākṣasa court had fallen, where the king's will was the only law; and the conquest of the world-guardians and the spoils of three worlds, the marks of his former fame, were now meaningless. While they talked, Rāvaṇa, beside himself with rage, ran at Vaidehī in the Aśoka grove. Friends who wished him well tried to hold him back, but he would not listen, for anger had destroyed his judgment, and he rushed on in fury like a baleful planet bearing down on Rohiṇī in the sky, an image of Sītā's innocence and Rāvaṇa's cruelty. The poet keeps repeating words of speed, rushing, running, dashing, so that the haste and the fear mount together, and the reader fears for Sītā's life. Blameless Maithilī, guarded by the rākṣasīs, saw the enraged rākṣasa coming with his fine sword drawn, and seeing that he would not turn back though his friends tried again and again to stop him, Janaka's daughter was stricken with dread.

Overcome with sorrow, Sītā lamented: "The way this evil-minded one is rushing at me himself in his fury, he will kill me as if I had no protector, though I have one. Many times he urged me, devoted as I am to my husband, to be his wife, and each time I rejected him. Finding me unwilling, he has plainly given up hope, and in rage and delusion he means to kill me. Or else those two tigers among men, the brothers Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, have been struck down in battle today because of me by this ignoble one, for I heard a great and terrible roar from many rākṣasas calling gladly to one another. Alas, shame on me, that the two princes should perish on my account! Or else, grieving for his son, without having killed Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, this fierce rākṣasa of evil purpose will destroy me. Petty as I was, I did not do what Hanūmān told me; had I gone then on his back, unconquered, I would not be grieving like this now but would be in my husband's arms. I think Kausalyā's heart will break when she, who has a single son, hears that her son has perished in battle. Weeping, she will remember the birth of that great-souled one, his boyhood and youth, his righteous deeds and his beauty; hopeless, her son dead, she will offer the śrāddha and then, out of her mind, surely enter the fire or the waters. Shame on that hunchback Mantharā, wicked and evil in her purpose, because of whom Kausalyā will come to this grief!" Many feelings run through Sītā's lament. She thinks of three possibilities, all painful: that he will kill her because she refused him; that Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa have been killed, since she heard the rākṣasas' cry of joy, though in fact it was only the ministers' lion's roar and not a shout of victory, which she could not know; or that grief for his son drives him to kill her. Yet it is not fear of her own death that fills her but concern for Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, remorse, and her mother-in-law's sorrow. She recalls how in the Sundara Kāṇḍa Hanūmān had offered to carry her to Rāma on his back and she had refused, unwilling to be touched by another man, and she now reproaches herself as petty, though that decision had been in keeping with dharma; her one desire is to be at her husband's side. "Protected, yet as if unprotected" deepens the pathos. Forgetting her own plight she thinks of Kausalyā's, and imagines it in full, the memories, the weeping, the funeral offering, the plunge into fire or water, which shows her love and reverence for Rāma's mother and the height of her character. And she traces the whole chain of sorrow back to Mantharā, who caused the exile, from which came the abduction. Her lament is long, yet in it there is not one word of pleading to Rāvaṇa; she does not beg for her life.

As she lamented like Rohiṇī fallen into the power of a baleful planet without the moon, the pitiable ascetic Maithilī was seen by Rāvaṇa's minister Supārśva, virtuous, pure and wise, a well-wisher and no flatterer. Though the other ministers tried to hold him back, which shows his courage and his truthfulness, he spoke to Rāvaṇa, best of rākṣasas: "Ten-necked one, you are the younger brother of Vaiśravaṇa himself; how can you want to kill Vaidehī in anger, casting righteousness aside? You have completed your study of the Vedas and kept your vows, and you are devoted to your duty; how, hero, lord of rākṣasas, can you think of killing a woman? Look at Maithilī, king, and her beauty, and turn your anger instead on Rāghava in battle, with us beside you. Today is the fourteenth of the dark fortnight; make your preparations today, and tomorrow, on the day of the new moon, go out surrounded by your forces for victory. A hero, wise, a warrior with chariot and sword, mounted on a splendid chariot, you will kill Rāma son of Daśaratha and win Maithilī." Supārśva's counsel is shrewd. He reminds Rāvaṇa of his family, his learning and his vows, for Rāvaṇa was born of a brāhmaṇa line, the grandson of Pulastya, and had studied the Vedas; he shows him that killing a woman is a grave sin, above all for a man of learning; he stirs his pride so that he will turn back from so base a deed; and then he points his anger at its proper target, Rāma. In telling him to look at Maithilī's beauty he is really asking what Rāvaṇa would gain by killing her, and the mention of the new moon fixes the day of battle. The evil Rāvaṇa accepted these most righteous words from his friend and went back to his palace, a rare moment in his story; and so Sītā's life was saved. Then, surrounded by his friends, the valiant king went once more to the assembly hall; in the next sarga he will send his army out to battle.