Chapter 44 - Angada’s Exploit

During the combat between monkeys and titans, the sun sank below the horizon, giving place to a night of carnage. In their mutual hostility, monkeys and titans, burning for victory, continued to fight in the gathering gloom.

“Art you a titan?” asked the monkeys—“Art you a monkey?” questioned the titans and struck at each other in the darkness. “Strike!” “Kill!” “Come hither!” “Why fleest you?” could be heard in that appalling struggle.

Clad in mail, the titans, their dark hue intensified by the impenetrable gloom, resembled hills covered with woods abounding in phosphorescent herbs and, transported with anger, they bounded forward in order to fall on the Plavamgamas and devour them, but these hurled themselves on the horses with golden plumes and the banners, like unto tongues of fire, and with indescribable fury tore them down with their sharp daws. Thus did those mighty monkey warriors sow confusion amongst the titans and they clawed the elephants and those mounted upon them and the chariots from which the banners streamed, breaking them to pieces with their teeth.

Full of fury, Lakshmana and Rama, with their arrows resembling venomous snakes pierced the foremost of the titans, both those who were visible and those who were invisible, and the dust rising from the hooves of the horses and the wheels of the chariots filled the ears and eyes of the combatants, whilst rivers of blood flowed in dreadful torrents in that ghastly tumult which caused the hair to stand on end.

Meanwhile the sound of gongs and drums, marvellous to hear, joined to the blare of conches and the rattle of wheels, and a terrible clamour arose of horses neighing mingling with the cries of the wounded. The corpses of great monkeys, spears, maces and the bodies of the titans, who were able to change their form at will, lay in heaps as high as a mountain on the battlefield. And those weapons appeared to be offered up as a profusion of flowers by the earth, which was entirely hidden and rendered impassable by rivers of blood. That fatal night was as calamitous to the monkeys and titans as the night of dissolution wherein no being survives.

Meanwhile the titans, aided by that impenetrable darkness, with great ferocity showered a hail of weapons on Rama and, yelling, advanced upon him in fury like the ocean at the time of the destruction of all creatures. And Rama, in the twinkling of an eye, with six shafts resembling tongues of flame struck down six titans—the indomitable Yajnashatru, Mahaparshva, Mahodara, Vajradamshtra of colossal stature and the two emissaries, Shuka and Sarana. With his innumerable shafts, Rama thereafter pierced them all in their vital parts, so that under that shower of arrows they fled from the field, barely escaping with their lives. In an instant, that warrior of the great car lit up the cardinal points with his formidable missiles resembling tongues of fire so that every quarter became luminous. All those titans, who dared to challenge Rama, perished like moths in a flame, and those arrows, whose points were of fine gold, flying everywhere, illumined the night as do the fireflies in autumn. The cries of the titans and the roll of drums increased the horrors of that night beyond imagining and, in that terrible uproar which re-echoed on every side, it seemed as if the Mount Trikuta was emitting confused murmurs from its innumerable caves.

The gigantic Golangulas, black as night, crushed the rangers of the night in their arms in order to devour them and Angada destroyed his foes with savagery in the struggle.

Then Indrajita, after that monkey had slain his steeds and charioteer, overcome with fatigue, made himself invisible and vanished.

For this feat, Bali’s son, worthy of being honoured, was lauded by the Gods and Rishis as also by the brothers, Rama and Lakshmana. All beings aware of the prowess of the mighty Indrajita in war, witnessing his discomfiture and, beholding that high-souled one, were elated and, in the height of joy, the monkeys with Sugriva and Bibishana, seeing the enemy’s defeat, cried out “Excellent! Excellent!”

Meanwhile Indrajita, who had been overcome in the duel with Bali’s son of redoubtable deeds, was seized with violent wrath. Rendering himself invisible by virtue of the boon he had received from Brahma, that wicked wretch, who was exhausted by the fight, transported with anger, loosed some sharp arrows bright as lightning on Rama and Lakshmana. On the field of battle, in his rage, he pierced the limbs of those two Raghavas with formidable shafts resembling serpents. Enveloped by illusion, he sought to confuse them in the struggle and, invisible to all beings through his magic arts, that ranger of the night bound those two brothers Rama and Lakshmana with a network of arrows. Then the monkeys beheld the two warriors, those lions among men, enmeshed by the serpentine darts of that furious titan. Not being able to overcome those two princes in his manifest form, the son of the King of the Titans, in his perversity, had recourse to magic in order to make them captive.