Hanuman Goes to War, Wins Victory and Marries Many Maidens

When Varuna again defied him, Ravana marched once more, summoning by written command the lords of Kishkindhapura, Alakapura, Rathanupura and Chakravalapura, the Vidyadharas of both ranges of Vaitadhya (Vijayardha) and the Bhumigocharis (earth-dwelling humans); when his letter reached Pratisurya and Pavananjaya on Hanuruha Island, they prepared to go and drums sounded to crown Hanuman as guardian of the island in their absence. Hanuman protested that his elders should not go while he was there and, told that he was a boy who had never seen battle, replied that just as a bhavya soul (one capable of liberation), though it has wandered since beginningless time without reaching the fifth state, liberation, will surely reach it, so he, though untried, would surely defeat Varuna.

Overriding his family's protests, Hanuman bathed, worshipped the Jina with auspicious offerings, bowed to the Arhats, Siddhas and other Parameshthis (supreme beings), took leave of his parents and uncle and flew towards Lanka with armed vassals, spending the night on Mount Jalavichi in the cool sea breeze; when he reached Ravana's camp the Rakshasa Vidyadharas marvelled at the mighty Shrishaila who had shattered a mountain as a baby. Ravana rose from his throne, embraced him and seated him at his side, the two meeting like the Indras of the Saudharma and Ishana heavens, and declared that Pavananjaya had shown great love in sending such a son and that with him all his wishes would be fulfilled, while Hanuman, as great men do, looked down modestly at the praise.

At dawn Ravana advanced, and Hanuman by the power of his vidya (magical science) pierced the ocean and reached Varuna's city, as Subhauma Chakravarti once marched on Parashurama. Varuna, valiant as Chamarendra (the Indra of the Asura gods), and his hundred proud sons sallied out from Pundarikapura in Patala and so routed the Rakshasas that discuses, thunderbolts, bows and spears fell from their hands, and Ravana, fighting the hundred sons alone, was riddled with arrows.

Seeing Ravana pierced and bloodied, Hanuman charged in his chariot, binding some of the sons with a magical tail-noose (langula-pasha) and felling others with maces, so that Varuna's host broke as false doctrines break before the Jina's anekanta (many-sided) teaching. When Varuna turned on Hanuman, Ravana blocked him as a mountain blocks a river; meanwhile Hanuman bound all hundred sons, and Varuna, stunned with grief, forgot his vidyas and was seized by Ravana, who handed him over to Kumbhakarna while Varuna's army fled into Pundarikapura.

When Kumbhakarna angrily wished to plunder Varuna's city, Ravana forbade it, saying the fault was Varuna's, not his subjects', and that tormenting the weak is great injustice and leads to an evil destiny; he told Varuna that a warrior is either captured or killed and only cowards flee, exchanged forgiveness with him and bade him rule his kingdom in peace. Varuna, with joined hands, praised Ravana for defeating him with ordinary weapons rather than his god-guarded jewels, said the earth belongs not to inherited lines but to heroes, and gave him his daughter Satyavati in marriage, though he grieved afterwards at her parting.

Ravana greatly honoured Hanuman, married him to Anangakusuma, daughter of his sister Chandranakha, and crowned him king of the rich city of Karnakundalapura, where he lived like Indra in heaven. Hanuman also married Harimalini, the lovely daughter of King Nala of Kishkupura, and a hundred daughters of the Kinnara-clan Vidyadharas of Kinnaragita city, a thousand princesses of many kings in all; his name Shrishaila, from his birth in a mountain cave and his fall onto a mountain, became famous on earth, and the mountain he had shattered, which he visited with great delight, became famous too.

In Kishkindhapura, King Sugriva and Queen Sutara lay sleepless seeking a worthy groom for their gifted daughter Padmaraga; she turned away from the portraits of Ravana's son Indrajit and many other princes, but at Hanuman's portrait she was pierced by all five arrows of Kama and, as her friends praised him, shyly struck the picture with her play-lotus. Sugriva had her portrait shown to Hanuman, for whom Kama's five arrows became a hundred; thinking that despite his thousand queens, among them Kharadushana's daughter, Ravana's niece, he was not truly married without Padmaraga, he flew to Kishkindhapura in an instant and married her with great splendour, leaving Sugriva and Sutara sad for days at her parting, while Pavananjaya and Anjana rejoiced in their famous son.

Ravana, lord of three khandas (divisions) of Bharata and served by heroes like Hanuman, lived happily in Lanka with eighteen thousand devoted queens; all the Vidyadhara and Bhumigochari kings consecrated him as Ardhachakri (half-Chakravarti) and accepted him as their master, and in his armoury blazed the god-attended Sudarshana chakra (discus), which accomplishes every task and destroys any king who defies him, and the lightning-bright danda-ratna (staff jewel). He was the eighth Prati-vasudeva (Prati-narayana), enjoying Lanka, which had come down to him through his lineage by the power of merit, and he lived after Munisuvrata's liberation and before Naminatha.

Gautama warned that, because Munisuvrata's age is long past, ignorant people have told Ravana's story falsely and called him a meat-eater, though he ate grain like other men; his one crime was the abduction of Sita, for which he was slain and suffered in the next world. He urged Shrenika to hold fast to the scripture taught by the Jinas, which washes away the mud of false belief, and with this chapter on Ravana's consecration as chakra-bearing sovereign the first section of the book, on the Vidyadhara lineages, comes to an end.