Part 10: Killing of Śambūka

Now in Pātālalaṅkā there were two sons of Khara and Candraṇakhā, Śambūka and Suna, just grown up. Though restrained by his parents, Śambūka went one day to Daṇḍakāraṇya for the purpose of subduing the sword, Sūryahāsa. He stood in a bamboo-thicket on the bank of the Krauñcaravā and said, “I will kill anyone who hinders me.” Enjoying solitude, pure-minded, chaste, his senses subdued, face-down, his feet fastened to a branch of a banyan tree, he began to mutter the vidyā which subdues the sword Sūryahāsa, which attains success after twelve years and seven days. When he had remained in the position of a bat for twelve years and four days, Sūryahāsa, wishing to yield, concealed by its scabbard, with fragrance bursting forth, came through the air to the bamboo-thicket.

As Saumitri was wandering here and there for amusement, he came there and saw the sword, Sūryahāsa, like a mass of rays of the sun. He took the sword and drew it from its scabbard. For warriors are curious at sight of a new weapon. To test its sharpness Lakṣmaṇa immediately cut the bamboo-thicket which was near, cutting off a stalk. He saw the lotus-head of Śambūka, who had been within the bamboo-thicket, fall, severed, to the ground in front of him. When Saumitri entered the bamboo-thicket before him he saw the corpse hanging from a branch of the banyan.

“I have killed a man who was not fighting, unarmed. Shame on me for that act,” he reproached himself. He went and told the whole story to Rāmabhadra and showed him the sword. Rāma said, “This sword is Sūryahāsa. You have killed its worshipper. Some assistant worshipper of it is certainly to be conjectured.”

Just then Daśagrīva’s sister, Candraṇakhā, thinking, “Today Sūryahāsa will yield to my son,” hastily took food and drink for a pūjā and went there, delighted. She saw her son’s head cut off, with dangling earrings. Crying, “Where are you, child! Oh! Śambūka, Śambūka,” she saw the pleasing foot-prints of Lakṣmaṇa. “That is the track of the man who killed my son,” and Candraṇakhā followed the foot-prints quickly. When she had gone a short distance, she saw Rāma with Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa, very delightful to the eye, standing under a tree. She was infatuated with Rāma as soon as she had seen him. There is a certain intentness on love in passionate women even in superabundant sorrow, alas!

After creating the form of a maiden which resembled a Nāga-maiden, wounded by love, she approached Kākutstha, trembling. Rāmabhadra said to her, “Fair lady, whence have you come here to this cruel Daṇḍakāraṇya, the sole abode of Kṛtānta?” She said: “I am the daughter of the king of Avanti. During the night while I was asleep on top of the palace, I was kidnaped by a Khecara. When he had come here to the forest with me, another Vidyādhara, armed with a sword, saw him and said to him; ‘Where are you going, after seizing this jewel of a woman like a kite a pearl-necklace? Villain, death, in me, is at hand for you.’ Thus addressed, he released me here and fought with him for a long time. Both of them perished like rutting wild elephants. I ran away alone and, wandering here and there, found you, like a shadow a tree in the forest, because of my virtue in former births. Therefore, marry me, master, as I am a maiden belonging to a good family. Certainly the request of suitors is not in vain among the noble.”

“Certainly some sorceress, disguised like an actor, producing a false play, has come here to deceive us.” With these reflections, agreeing in their conjectures, Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa looked at each other for a long time with wide-open eyes. Then Rāma, his lips blossoming with a flood of moonlight of smiles, said to her, “I have my wife with me. Take Lakṣmaṇa without a wife.” Lakṣmaṇa, asked by her in the same way, said, “You went to the elder brother. You are like an elder sister. Enough of this conversation.”