The Ramayana

by Ramesh Menon

  The arrow Lakshmana aimed at Atikaya was like a flame of the fire that incinerates the universe when time ends. The rakshasa tried to stop it with ten shafts of his own. But licking the enemy’s arrows from the sky, the brahmashakti came on inexorably. It flashed into Atikaya’s chest, consumed him, and nothing remained of Ravana’s son but white ashes. His jeweled crown rolled down from his elephant’s back, and in a celebrant gust Vayu scattered his remains over land and sea.

  Once more the vanaras turned cartwheels on thin air. They kissed their long tails and leaped up at the moon rising in the east. The rakshasas fled back to Ravana.

  25. Brahmastra

  Ravana was numb when he heard that Trisiras, Atikaya, and all his other sons who had gone to battle against the vanaras were dead. He had no tears left to shed. All night, he sat alone in his court, plunged in dark grief, near madness. Again and again, one thought plagued him, phantasmagorically: “What if this Rama is really Vishnu, come as a man? Who can face him and his monkey army?”

  At dawn, as if in answer to his despair, he heard urgent footfalls in the passage outside. Ravana’s son by Mandodari, the peerless Indrajit, stalked sleek and feline into his father’s presence. Indrajit was shocked to see the change in the king who sat so defeated on his throne. This was not even a shadow of that Rakshasa of immeasurable power, his father Ravana. The Demon before him was a broken old man; he had aged ten lives in a night.

  Standing haughty and assured before his sire, Indrajit said, “There is no cause for you to despair as long as I still live. I bound the humans with the nagapasa and I cannot think how they escaped. But this time they will die. Let heaven and hell be my witnesses, father, I will bring you the heads of Rama and Lakshmana.”

  Ravana sat bemused, lost in a fearful reverie. At last he blessed his great son woodenly, not saying a word, not even rising from his throne. Knowing the only specific for the king’s malady was Rama’s death, Indrajit strode out of the palace. His chariot waited for him outside, silvery as the moon and fleet as wishes.

  The rakshasas knew Indrajit had bound the Kosala princes with his coils of serpent fire. They knew he was the one to reverse the disastrous course this war had taken. They cheered him lustily when he came out. Prahastha and Kumbhakarna were forgotten for the moment, and all the others who had died. This was Indrajit who had come to lead them into battle: invincible Indrajit, said by many to be a greater warrior than even his father. This was Indrajit, their next king. The rakshasas roared, “Jaya Indrajit! Jaya! Jaya!”

  Emboldened again by their crown prince’s presence, blasting on conches, clashing swords and spears against shields and armor, the rakshasas came back into battle. Like a soft storm Indrajit’s army swept toward the field. As it swayed in the morning breeze, the prince’s royal parasol was white as wave froth or the inside of a seashell. At the edge of the city of Lanka, Indrajit raised his arms to stop his army’s march.

  He jumped down from his chariot and summoned the brahmana priest he had brought with him. That old rakshasa kindled a fire on the threshold of the field. Indrajit worshipped his God, Agni, with oblations and offerings. This was usually done before any battle; but before this one began, Ravana had been so confident he had not bothered to perform the ritual. With rice grains, with flowers and incense and resonant mantras, Ravana’s eldest son now worshipped the sacred fire and the Navagraha, the nine planets.

  The fire burned high. When the rakshasas saw no smoke came from it, they set up another loud cheer: it was an omen that Indrajit would be like smokeless fire, implacable! As the priest chanted his mantras and Indrajit stood very still beside him, Agni himself stepped out from that fire. Flames were his tawny body; flames were his face and his hair, and he stood iridescent before his bhakta. With his own hands, like lotuses ablaze, the Fire God received the havis from Indrajit. What more auspicious omen could the rakshasas have hoped for?

  “Victory!” they thundered. “Jaya Indrajit! Jaya!”

  Indrajit invoked the brahmastra. He worshipped it, and his bow, his arrows, and his silver chariot. The sky blanched when he performed these rituals; the earth shook and the sea rose in hilly waves to dash against the shores of Lanka. When his worship was complete, Indrajit climbed into his chariot, flashed up into the air, and vanished. Roaring, for this was their signal, the rakshasas flew at the marauding monkeys.

  As the sun was climbing toward his zenith, the rakshasas fought fiercely for their yuvaraja. And from on high, where his chariot flitted at his will, fell a hot deluge of arrows. As banks of sunrays do the night at dawn, Indrajit’s shafts pierced the vanara army.

  The monkeys did not die in hundreds now, but in thousands, each moment. The field at Lanka’s gates was strewn with corpses of the jungle folk, their long-limbed bodies askew, piquant in death. Indrajit’s arrows were made of pure and smokeless fire. Each one scorched the earth and ashed a thousand vanaras. Their screams echoed in Ravana’s ears as he sat so dismally in his palace. He knew they were monkeys dying. He rose painfully, and came out onto his terrace to watch his son do battle.

  Ravana saw Indrajit fly down to the ground and fight where his aim was truer and his arrows still more terrible. The father saw the devastation his prince brought to the enemy. Hope sparked alive again in his heart: perhaps not all was lost. From his terrace, Ravana shouted his son’s name.

  The vanaras attacked Indrajit with trees and rocks, but in vain. He was such an archer they hardly saw his hands move; yet arrows flowed from his bow like light from the sun. Rock and tree trunk were smashed in flight, and the incendiary shafts flew on and stuck in the monkeys’ chests, immolating them. Gandhamadana, Nala, Neela, Mainda and Gaja, Jambavan, Rishabha, Angada, and Dwividha had come to face Indrajit. But they were all helpless against his wizardly archery. They could not come near him; his chariot was always protected by an uncanny ring of fire arrows.

  He struck them all, at times with fire and again with plain sharp points. Then he vanished, and just his arrows of green, blue, and scarlet flames still streamed at the vanaras. One moment they rose from the earth, then they fell from the sky; now from afar, now from near. The spectacle was so brilliant and beautiful that at times the monkeys stood gazing at it, while death came humming down at them.

  It was all the sorcery of the brahmastra that Indrajit had invoked before the sacred agni. The young rakshasa flew down toward where Rama and Lakshmana stood. He shot a hundred arrows at them; but those shafts turned weak and fell tamely around the brothers. Cursing, he flew back on high and killed five thousand monkeys. The demon prince’s hubris was boundless. He hated to think anyone could withstand his arrows as Rama and Lakshmana did.

  Rama said to his brother, “It is his ancestor Brahma’s power he fights with. All this is the maya of the brahmastra. He wants to break our spirit by fighting invisibly. He wants us to panic, and that we must never do.”

  Now a cloud of sorcery appeared in the sky, crackling with thunder and lightning. From it issued a million shafts, formed into great flowers, deadly rainbow flowers, all of sleep. Whispering susurrantly, they floated down on the vanara army and, one by one, every monkey fell into a trance. They would have all been killed, except that at the last moment before the petal fire fell on them, Rama cried out to Lakshmana and the princes drew the brahmastra’s deepest power away from the forest folk and upon themselves, and they also fell in a swoon.

  Thus the vanaras’ lives were saved. They only slept, and dreams of Brahmaloka swept them far from that battlefield into incredible mandalas they would remember nothing of when they awoke: if ever they did awake, for the slumber of the brahmastra could last until the universe dissolved in the pralaya.

  Darkness fell on that field, a moonless night when there are no stars in the sky. Indrajit’s triumphant roars echoed through Lanka, and he was borne away once more on the shoulders of his ecstatic rakshasas. They had all seen how the vanaras had fallen, every last one, and how Rama and Lakshmana had fallen with them.

  Vibheeshana,
who was a tapasvin and possessed considerable spiritual powers, was unaffected by the astra. He stood alone, surrounded by abysmal silence and darkness. He looked around him, and as far as his eyes could see, monkeys lay unbreathing on the ground, trapped in the limbo of the astra. He saw a lone torch weaving its way toward him. Vibheeshana drew his sword. The bearer of the torch came nearer, and he saw it was Hanuman, glowing in the unnatural night.

  They embraced fervently, and Vibheeshana said, “Truly, Brahma has blessed you that his own astra has no power over you.”

  Hanuman said, “I worshipped the Pitamaha and his weapon, and I am safe. But what about the others?” He gasped, “Rama and Lakshmana!”

  Vibheeshana said, “They have absorbed most of the brahmastra’s power, but they are not dead. Let us see who else is awake.”

  Vibheeshana also lit a rushlight of dry grass from the one Hanuman carried, and they set off through the unmoving vanaras and their rocks and trees fallen beside them. When they had stumbled along some way, a voice hailed them weakly, “Vibheeshana, is Hanuman alive?”

  Hanuman and Vibheeshana ran to the voice. It was Jambavan, writhing on the ground with the agony of the astra; but he was conscious and recovering his strength rapidly. They helped him up and gave him water to drink. He revived at their ministrations, and the stupor seemed to ebb out of him.

  When Jambavan had his breath back, Vibheeshana said to him, “How is it, great reeksha, that you ask after Hanuman, and not Sugriva or Rama, both of whom have fallen?”

  26. Oshadhiparvata

  Jambavan said simply, “If Hanuman lives, there is hope for all the rest.”

  Vibheeshana and Hanuman stood, curious, beside the grizzly jungle warrior. Suddenly overcome, Hanuman knelt beside Jambavan and set his head at the reeksha’s feet. Since infancy, Hanuman had known and loved the old one like his own father. Shaking the miasma of the brahmastra from his head, Jambavan rose.

  He said, “You must cross the ocean for us again, Son of the wind. Only you can save Rama, Lakshmana, and our fallen army. Hanuman, fly to the Himalaya. In the very north of that range, beside white Kailasa, you will see another mountain as splendid as sunrise.

  “Neither sacred Kailasa nor golden Rishabha is your quarry, but a third peak that nestles between these two: Oshadhiparvata. Miraculous plants of healing grow on that mountain, and if you reach there after dark, you will see them light up the night with soft luminescence.

  “We need four herbs to revive our army: the mritasanjivini that Sukracharya always uses to call back his dead; the vishalyakarani, the savarnyakarani, and the santanakarani, which heal all wounds, however grievous, with their very fragrance. These are the eldest herbs of healing that grow upon the earth, and their secrets are known only to the few who have studied their lore.

  “Fly to the Oshadhiparvata, Hanuman, and bring back the four oshadhis.”

  Even before Jambavan had finished speaking, Hanuman began to grow, as he once did on the shores of Bharatavarsha. The spirit of his father, tameless Vayu, was upon him again, and his love for Rama, who lay as if dead on the darkling field. Hanuman grew tall as a tree and, with a few strides, gained the pinnacle of Mount Suvela. Not once did he turn back, but leaped off that peak straightaway. The son of the wind soared above the resinous darkness of the brahmastra and into sunlight again. With Vayu’s blessing coursing in his every fiber, he flew north in the direction of the Devas.

  Swiftly as his father flew Hanuman, who is called Maruti for his speed—quick as the Maruts. Like a thought, he sped through the blue vaults of the sky. It was a fine day everywhere, save in Lanka, and as he flew higher the air around him was cold. Below him the blue-green ocean lay like a woman languid, dreaming. He thought how innocent the elements seemed of the tragedy from which he came: that the Lord of the earth lay unbreathing on a fateful field from Indrajit’s brahmastra.

  Soon the sacred peninsula of Bharatavarsha, which had once been a vast island in the sea and had drifted north manvantaras ago, appeared under him. Sprawling jungles, rivers, plateaus, hills, and gleaming plains appeared below Hanuman as he flashed on and on, ever north. But he had no eyes for any of those excellent sights. Absorbed in his mission, he flew on, pushing himself until he flew quicker than the wind.

  As evening fell, Hanuman saw the Himalaya ahead of him, stretching from horizon to horizon, like a necklace of crimson and gold across Bhumi Devi’s throat. As he flew on, the great range grew taller with every moment, its majesty lit by the last shafts of the setting sun. Over the first peaks flitted Hanuman, over sheer white gorge and glacier, pale river and silvery waterfall. Night fell quickly around him.

  The cold clutched at him, but he hardly noticed it. All he saw in his mind was Rama’s face, its eyes shut and plunged in darkness. On flew Hanuman and crossed the jutting massifs of Himavan. He came beyond them to a tableland where a hundred lakes sparkled with reflected starlight. One of them was so magical he could feel its wonder reach up to caress him with mystic fingers. That lake perched between heaven and earth; Hanuman guessed it was the fabled Manasa sarovara, which Brahma created long ago, with a thought.

  Now myriad flames dotted the hills under him, where fires burned in a hundred asramas to keep the biting cold at bay. This was holy country, where the greatest rishis of Aryavarta lived in tapasya. Ahead loomed two mighty peaks that stood apart from the rest of the Himalaya. In the starlight he navigated by, to Hanuman they seemed the most sacred and mysterious of all. One was tall and white as goose feathers, and Hanuman knew this was Kailasa, where Siva lived. Thrice he circled that holiest mountain, and it seemed to him that a blessing greater than earth and sky reached out to touch his heart from the white eminence.

  Beyond Kailasa, he saw another taller mountain of burnished gold. Its sides were smooth, and it glowed like an occult and unknowable yantra: the heart of the earth! Yet it was not towering Meru that attracted Hanuman, but a third mountain that lay between pale Kailasa and the golden one. It was much smaller than the other two, and dark by comparison. But it shone with a million twinkling phosphorescences. When Hanuman looked closer, he saw these were not the night fires of rishis, but the leaves of the plants that grew here, leaves like silver tongues of flame.

  Hanuman flew down toward the glowing leaves. But as he drew near, they vanished from below him and the little mountain lay in darkness. Hanuman sprang up again and flew back into the sky; once more the plants of healing glimmered below him. Again the son of the wind flew down. But even as his feet sought solid ground to land on, the light of the plants disappeared.

  Hanuman knew that the plants and the mountain colluded to conceal the oshadhis from him. Thinking of Rama, who lay unmoving on distant Lanka, the vanara gave a roar that the planets above heard. He struck the mountain with his fist in rage. Growling, great Hanuman grew greater still. In hands grown vast beyond imagining, he grasped Oshadhiparvata by its sides. Hanuman shut his eyes; he gritted his teeth and pulled that mountain out of the earth by its roots.

  The vanara’s body blazed. He flashed through the sky, bearing Oshadhiparvata above him in immense palms. Like light, Hanuman flew with the mountain. He flew so fast he vanished from the starlit sky and arrived almost at once in Lanka. Like a falling meteor, the son of the wind descended to the earth. Gently he set the mountain of herbs down beside Sugriva’s unconscious army in the zone of the brahmastra, where it was neither day nor night, but bizarre twilight.

  A kindly breeze blew into the limbo and filled it with the scents of the oshadhis. At once Rama stirred, and then Lakshmana. They shook their heads and sat up. The darkness of the astra dissipated. One by one, rubbing their eyes, all the vanaras awoke. Sugriva awoke, Angada, Neela and Nala, Rishabha and Mainda, and the others. Every vanara the brahmastra had felled revived. The stars shone down again, and the rising moon, like balm. As the rich fragrances of the oshadhis caressed them, even the monkeys who had been killed in battle rose from the dead, to fight again for Rama against the legions of evil.

&nb
sp; But no rakshasa rose from the dead, because none lay lifeless on the field. It was Ravana’s command that the body of any demon who died was to be cast into the sea. Rama blessed Hanuman who stood before him with tears of joy in his eyes.

  Rama said, “Mighty one, return the mountain to its roots. Let Oshadhiparvata stand where it has always stood, between Meru and Kailasa. Lest another hero like you fly there someday in quest of the healing herbs.”

  Hanuman grew vast again; he lifted the mountain. While the vanaras cheered him wildly, he rose into the sky and raced away across the face of the moon, along the paths of the Devas and the wind, toward the Himalaya. Hanuman flew quickly as a wish once more, and returned in time too brief to tell, after planting Oshadhiparvata back in its place in the north.

  * * *

  Sugriva called Hanuman. He said, “The night is ripe for deeds. We must strike back while the rakshasas celebrate our death. Let some of our bravest monkeys enter Lanka with torches in their hands.”

  An army of flames, the vanaras approached the drunken, triumphant rakshasas. Some demon guards saw the torches the monkeys carried appear on top of Lanka’s smooth walls. They thought it was all the wine they had drunk that made them see things that were not there. Then they thought perhaps it was some of their own people waving lamps in celebration. For they had seen the vanara army laid low by Indrajit’s astra. The monkeys scampered along the rooftops, so recently restored after Hanuman’s inferno. Before the rakshasas had time to gather themselves or repulse the shadowy intruders, Lanka was on fire again.

  Like a nest of sin being exorcised, Ravana’s city blazed with monkey fire. Before they knew what flames consumed them, mansions and palaces caught and burned down, and thousands of rakshasas died in their sleep. Women perished, and children; this was war. When the vanaras had set the city of night alight, they came flying back to Rama. The screams of the burned and the burning swelled above the crash of waves against the shores of Lanka. Snatched back from the dimension of sleep, into which the brahmastra had plunged them, Rama and Lakshmana raised their bows and pulled on their bowstrings like echoes of the apocalypse.