रावणस्त्रीणां विलापः

Hearing that Rāvaṇa had been slain by the great Rāghava, the rākṣasīs, wasted with grief, rushed out of the inner apartments. Women of the palace were not usually seen outside, but grief made them forget that rule. The rākṣasas tried again and again to hold them back, but the force of their grief overrode every restraint: they rolled in the dust of the ground, their hair loose, stricken like cows whose calves have been killed. Going out with the rākṣasas by the northern gate and entering the dreadful battlefield, they searched for their slain lord, crying "O noble lord!" and "Alas, my master!", running everywhere over ground marked with headless trunks and turned to mud with blood, among broken weapons. Their eyes brimming with tears, overcome by grief for their husband, they wailed like she-elephants whose herd-leader has been killed. Then they saw Rāvaṇa lying slain on the ground, huge of body, of great valour and great splendour, like a heap of black collyrium, and suddenly seeing their lord lying in the dust of battle, they fell upon his limbs like forest creepers that have been cut down. The poet paints their helplessness with similes, cows without their calves, she-elephants without their leader, creepers cut down; first they had only heard the news, then they saw it with their own eyes, and their grief was doubled. That women who had lived at ease in palaces now wandered through a mire of blood shows the terrible result of the war, and the poet shows its pitiful side through the women's eyes and not only through the heroes'.

One embraced him out of deep regard and wept; one clasped his feet, another clung to his neck. One flung up her arms and rolled on the ground; another fainted at the sight of the dead man's face. One laid his head in her lap and wept as she gazed at his face, bathing it with her tears as a lotus is bathed with dew. The many ways they behaved show the many forms that grief takes. So, distressed at seeing their lord slain on the ground, they cried out in many ways and lamented again: "He who terrified Śakra, who terrified Yama, who robbed King Vaiśravaṇa of the Puṣpaka," the aerial car he had seized after conquering Kubera, "who struck fear into gandharvas, sages and great gods in battle, lies here slain in battle. He who knew no fear of asuras, gods or serpents, to him this fear has come from a man. He who could not be killed by gods, dānavas or rākṣasas lies here slain in battle by a man fighting on foot. He whom gods, yakṣas and asuras could not kill has been brought to death by a mortal, like some feeble creature." So those grieving women wept for him and, overcome with sorrow, lamented again and again. The contradiction is the very root of their grief: one whom the gods could not kill was killed by a man, a chariot-warrior by a man on foot. When he received Brahmā's boon Rāvaṇa had counted men as mere straw and never asked to be safe from them, and that was the cause of his ruin. The women set his past conquests against his present fall, and their sorrow deepens; that he who terrified the three worlds now lies motionless is the reversal from which the pathos springs, and all his prowess has come to nothing.

"You would not listen to your friends," they said, "who always spoke for your good; you brought Sītā here for your own death, the rākṣasas have been struck down, and now we and you yourself are cast down together. Your dear brother Vibhīṣaṇa spoke for your good, yet in your folly, as if bent on your own destruction, you boldly abused him. Had you given Sītā of Mithilā back to Rāma, this terrible calamity, which has torn us up by the roots, would not have befallen us. Your brother would have had his wish, Rāma's house would have been a friend to us, none of us would be widows, and our enemies would not have got what they wanted. But you cruelly kept Sītā by force, and you have struck down all three alike: the rākṣasas, us and yourself." Here the women take Vibhīṣaṇa's side and condemn Rāvaṇa's misrule outright. "Bent on your own destruction" is a harsh word, as if Rāvaṇa had wished his own ruin, and "torn up by the roots" means the destruction of the whole family. Had Sītā been returned there would have been three gains: his brother's wish fulfilled, Rāma's friendship, and their own good fortune as wives. Their words show a grasp of statecraft too, that a king's disregard for his friends' good advice is the chief cause of his ruin; and the word for Vibhīṣaṇa's being abused recalls how Rāvaṇa had kicked and insulted him in the assembly.

"Yet, bull among rākṣasas, it was not your own will or desire that did this; fate drives everything, and whoever is struck down by fate is struck down. This destruction of monkeys and rākṣasas in battle, and your own too, mighty-armed one, has come about through fate. Once the course of fate is set in motion in the world, it cannot be turned back by wealth, by desire, by valour or by command." So the wives of the lord of the rākṣasas lamented piteously like ospreys, the birds whose cry is so plaintive, overcome by sorrow, their eyes clouded with tears. Having blamed Rāvaṇa, the women then name fate as the cause, as if to console him; this is the natural course of grief, where reproach is momentary and love endures. They know his crime, but they do not heap blame on him and instead recall the power of time and fate. "Whoever is struck by fate is struck" is a well-known saying: one already slain by fate is slain by others, so the man Rāma was only the instrument. And since the texts hold that fate is the fruit of one's own deeds, the hint is that Rāvaṇa's own past actions were the cause of his ruin. So the sarga begins in grief and ends in reflection on fate; in the next, his chief queen Mandodarī will lament.