The Ramayana · 456 of 493

Yuddha Kānda (The War Book): Canto 68 — Rávan’s Lament

They ran to Rávaṇ in his hall And told him of his brother’s fall: “Fierce as the God who rules the dead, Upon the routed foe he fed; And, victor for a while, at length Fell slain by Ráma’s matchless strength. Now like a mighty hill in size His mangled trunk extended lies, And where he fell, a bleeding mass, Blocks Lanká’s gate that none may pass.” The monarch heard: his strength gave way; And fainting on the ground he lay. Grieved at the giants’ mournful tale, Long, shrill was Atikáya’s wail; And Triśirás in sorrow bowed His triple head, and wept aloud. Mahodar, Mahápárśva shed Hot tears and mourned their brother dead. At length, his wandering sense restored, In loud lament cried Lanká’s lord: “Ah chief, for might and valour famed, Whose arm the haughty foeman tamed, Forsaking me, thy friends and all, Why hast thou fled to Yáma’s hall? Why hast thou fled to taste no more The slaughtered foeman’s flesh and gore? Ah me, my life is done to-day: My better arm is lopped away. Whereon in danger I relied, And, fearless, Gods and fiends defied. How could a shaft from Ráma’s bow The matchless giant overthrow, Whose iron frame so strong of yore The crushing bolt of Indra bore? This day the Gods and sages meet And triumph at their foe’s defeat. This day the Vánar chiefs will boast And, with new ardour fired, their host In fiercer onset will assail Our city, and the ramparts scale. What care I for a monarch’s name, For empire, or the Maithil dame? What joy can power and riches give, Or life that I should care to live, Unless this arm in mortal fray The slayer of my brother slay? For me, of Kumbhakarṇa reft, Death is the only solace left; And I will seek, o’erwhelmed with woes, The realm to which my brother goes. Ah me ill-minded, not to take His counsel when Vibhishaṇ spake When he this evil day foretold My foolish heart was overbold: I drove my sage adviser hence, And reap the fruits of mine offence.”

Insight

Kumbhakarṇa falls and the line Vālmīki gives Rāvaṇa is short and broken: my better arm is lopped away, what care I now for the kingdom or the woman, death is the only solace left. The grief is real, and the text honors it. The lament ends with a sentence Rāvaṇa would not have spoken at any earlier point in the epic: 'ah me, ill-minded, not to take his counsel when Vibhīṣaṇa spake.' He sees, too late, what he had been told. The story does not absolve him for the seeing. It records that the seeing came. A long modern habit, including in Indian retellings made for children, has flattened Rāvaṇa into a one-note villain who hisses and cackles. Vālmīki does not write that man. He writes a king who loved his brother and now sits inside the consequences of refusing the brother who could have saved him.On Rāvaṇa's grief and the modern flattening of his character: C. Rajagopalachari, Ramayana retold (1957), Anand Neelakantan, Asura: Tale of the Vanquished (2012); on the Vālmīki original's care for Rāvaṇa's grief, Robert Goldman, Princeton vol. 6 intro.