Ravana Masters the Bahurupini Vidya

Seeing Purnabhadra and Manibhadra pacified, Angada, son of Sugriva, enters Lanka on an elephant named Kishkindha, in fine clothes and gold ornaments, with foot soldiers on every side, vinas and flutes playing and dancers before him, like a god entering heaven. The women of Lanka whisper to one another, wondering what he means to do as he heads for Ravana's palace.

In the palace the Vanaras mistake a courtyard of gems for a lake, take fright at lifelike sapphire elephants and lion figures at the jewelled gateway until Angada tells them they are artificial, and wander lost like men born blind through crystal halls they take for open sky. They bang their heads on dark sapphire walls and fall senseless, bruise knees and foreheads on crystal walls, and ask the way of a jewelled statue of a woman, thinking her real.

A crystal wall keeps them from the visible spire of the Shantinatha temple; they ask the way of a jewelled doorkeeper statue holding a golden staff and, striking it, only break their own fingers. At last at a sapphire door they find a living man, seize him by the hair and make him lead them to the temple, where they shout victory and offer flowers, amazed at a shrine worthy of a Chakravarti's palace.

Leaving his mount and troops outside, Angada circles the Lord three times, recites hymns, makes the eight-limbed prostration and, seeing the sixteen dreams painted on the walls, bows again. Then he sees Ravana seated in padmasana (lotus posture) before Shantinatha, like Rahu before the sun, longing for the vidya as Bharata longed for Jina-diksha (initiation).

Angada taunts him: ‘What hypocrisy is this, Ravana? Shame on you, sinner, using the holy act of sadhana for sensual ends; I will treat you worse than death.’ He pulls off Ravana's garment, abuses and strikes his queens before him, takes away the flowers laid before him, and snatches his crystal rosary so the beads scatter, then restrings it and gives it back, snatches it again, hangs it round his neck and then on his head.

The princes run riot in the women's quarters: they bind one woman's neck with a cloth rope, tie others to pillars and loose them, pretend to sell one (‘sold for five dinars’, a companion laughs), put toe-rings in ears and girdles in hair, tie crowns to feet, bind women together by their hair and set screeching peacocks on their heads. Angada cries, ‘Vile Rakshasa, you stole the great sati Sita by deceit; now we carry off all your queens before your eyes,’ and drags Mandodari before Ravana by her braid like a lion seizing a doe, saying she will become a maid waving the chowrie for Sugriva.

Weeping, Mandodari clutches Ravana's feet and hands, begging him to save her: has he become a passionless nirgrantha muni, sitting like wood or a painting, unmoving as Sumeru, meditating on the vidya as Rama meditates on Sita, and shame on his strength that he does not strike off this wretch's head! At that very moment the Bahurupini vidya appears, lighting the ten directions and crying victory, and offers to subdue anyone who defies him, even the gods, except a Chakravarti or an Ardhachakravarti (half-emperor, that is, a Narayana), over whom such vidyas have no power.

Hearing the vidya, Ravana completes his sadhana, circles Shantinatha and bows to him, and at that moment Angada lets go of Mandodari and flies back through the sky to Rama, radiant as the sun. The chapter teaches that with faith and firmness in the mantras of the Jina's scripture every undertaking succeeds.