Ravana Sends an Envoy to Rama

Told by his spies of Lakshmana's recovery and marriage to Vishalya, Ravana laughs: ‘So the shakti came out, so he married Vishalya, what of it?’ Maricha and the other ministers boldly warn him that the lion and Garuda vidyas came to Rama and Lakshmana without effort, that his two mighty sons and brother Kumbhakarna are in bonds and his divine shakti has failed, and that even if he wins his sons and brother will surely perish, so he should release Sita and befriend Raghava.

The ministers decide to send a wise, eloquent envoy to propose peace, but Ravana, with a sign of his eyes, corrupts the message they had framed. The envoy's drums alarm the Vanara army, who fear Ravana himself is coming, and he is admitted through the gatekeeper and Bhamandala into Rama's presence.

The envoy delivers Ravana's words: ‘War destroys peoples; friendship with me is fitting. I am Ravana, who imprisoned kings like Indra and whom gods and Asuras obey in the netherworld, the waters and the sky; I will give you the earth up to the ocean with its Vidyadharas and split Lanka in two to give you half. Send me my brother and two sons and give me Sita, or I will free them by force.’

Rama answers that he needs neither Ravana's kingdom nor other women: let Sita be sent back and he will return the brother and both sons, Ravana may keep Lanka and all his realm, and Rama will happily roam the forest with Sita. The envoy retorts that Rama knows nothing of statecraft, that the wise guard their lives rather than covet women and wealth, and that the lion and Garuda vehicles and the trickery that bound Ravana's son and brother mean nothing while Ravana lives, whose slain foes' bones lie heaped like the peaks of Kailasa.

Bhamandala, enraged, calls the envoy a sinful jackal and draws his sword to kill him, but Lakshmana seizes his hand, and the ministers calm him: women, children, envoys, animals, birds, the old, the sick, the sleeping, the unarmed, refugees, ascetics and cows must never be killed, and an envoy only repeats his master's words like a parrot. Rama bids the envoy warn Ravana that foolish ministers are misleading him and that he should drop his false obstinacy over Sita and rule the earth, roaming in the Pushpaka vimana, and the others drive the envoy out without letting him speak again.

Back in Lanka the envoy reports that he offered Rama the earth with its jewels and Vidyadhara cities, elephants, horses and chariots, the Pushpaka vimana, marriage to three thousand princesses of Ravana's house, a throne like the sun and a parasol like the moon, with Ravana keeping only a cane seat, yet Rama clings to Sita as a muni to the twenty-eight mula gunas (root virtues). Rama said such words were unworthy of kings, that without Sita he wanted not even Indra's pleasures and would live on forest fruit with her, and that since Ravana stole another's wife and was ready to die, why should he not slay him for his own wife?

Sugriva had mocked Ravana as one seized by Saturn or a disorder of wind, asking whether Lanka had no physician, else Lakshmana would cure all his ills in battle; the envoy called him a dog barking behind an elephant, challenged Viradhita to single combat and told Rama that he could no more conquer the lifter of Kailasa than a lotus-leaf breeze could shake Sumeru. When Bhamandala drew his sword, Lakshmana held him back saying a lion does not rage at a jackal, the Kapi princes drove the envoy out, and he admits that but for Lakshmana he would have died; Gautama observes that even the learned, with able ministers, are darkened by moha.