Dashanana's Family and a Glimpse of His Glory

In Asurasangita on the southern row reigned the Vidyadhara king Maya; as Ravana's warriors were called Rakshasas and those of Indra's house Devas, Maya's great warriors were called Daityas. Anxious over the marriage of his lovely daughter Mandodari, born of Queen Hemavati, he consulted his queen and ministers; some proposed Indra, but Maya chose Ravana, who had mastered all the vidyas in a few days, and Maricha and the other ministers agreed.

At an auspicious hour Maya set out with Mandodari and Maricha for the Bhima forest, where Ravana, after a two-day fast, had won the Chandrahasa sword and then gone to worship at the Jina temples of Sumeru. On the seventh storey of a lofty palace near Svayamprabha they found his sister Chandranakha, who lived in the temple of the Tirthankara Chandraprabha and was guarding the sword; she received them with honour as kinsmen.

Ravana soon arrived through the sky; Maya's ministers Maricha, Vajramadhya, Vajrasena, Ugra, Nakra, Shukra and others praised his matchless form and introduced Maya as lord of the Daityas, and after they worshipped Jinendra together Ravana's eyes fell on Mandodari. Wondering whether she was Shri, Hri, Dhriti, Kirti, Buddhi, Lakshmi or Sarasvati, he felt his life would be worthless without her; Maya, reading his heart, called her forward and declared him her husband, and they were married that very day.

Among Ravana's thousands of queens Mandodari became the chief queen, devoted to her husband, and Maya went home relieved yet sad at parting. Ravana sported like Indra with Indrani in the Nandana forest of Sumeru and, by his vidyas, took many forms at once in his wives' palaces, now blazing like the sun, now cool as moonlight, now a horse swifter than the wind, now invisible, tiny or vast.

On Mount Meghavara Ravana came upon six thousand princesses playing in a clear step-well shaded by arjuna trees; he joined their water-play and all were captivated. Chief among them were Padmavati, daughter of King Surasundara and Queen Sarvashri, Ashokalata, daughter of King Budha and Queen Manovega, and Vidyutprabha, daughter of King Kanaka and Queen Sandhya, and Ravana married them by the Gandharva rite (marriage by mutual consent).

Told by the maidens' attendants, their fathers sent warriors whom Ravana routed single-handed; they fled to Surasundara declaring that not even Indra of Rathanupura was his equal, and Surasundara came himself with Budha, Kanaka and a great army. When the frightened brides begged him to hide in a nearby Jina temple, Ravana replied that a flock of crows cannot defeat Garuda and promised to protect their fathers and brothers.

Thinking it pointless to kill common soldiers, Ravana stunned the kings with Tamasa weapons and bound them in the Nagapasha (serpent noose), then freed them at the brides' plea and honoured them as kinsmen; won over by his valour and courtesy, the kings formally gave him their daughters amid three days of celebration, and Ravana returned to Svayamprabha, where Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana came out to welcome him.

Kumbhakarna (Bhanukarna), skilled in dharma-dhyana (righteous meditation), the arts and war, married Tadinmala, daughter of King Mandodara and Queen Svarupa of Kumbhapura. Gautama rejects the claim of other traditions that he ate flesh and blood and slept for six months: his food was pure, taken only after feeding munis, aryikas (nuns) and the hungry, he never ate meat and slept only in the latter part of the night, and falsely accusing those in their final birth (charama-sharira) is a grave sin.

Vibhishana married Rajivasarasi, lovelier than Lakshmi, daughter of Queen Nandanamala and King Vishuddhakamala of Jyotiprabha on the southern row, a close friend of Maya. Mandodari bore her first son Indrajit, whose name became famous throughout the earth, at her parents' home, where he grew like the waxing moon until Ravana called them back, and her second son Meghanada was likewise born there; both grew into handsome youths fit to bear the burden of the earth.

Kumbhakarna began seizing the goods of Indra and Vaishravana from the thousands of cities Vaishravana ruled and carrying them off to Svayamprabha. Vaishravana's envoy scolded Sumali for not restraining his thieving grandsons: had Mali's death done his clan any good, had he forgotten Indra's might, playing like a frog in a snake's mouth? He should hand them over to be set straight, or see the whole family chained and cast into a pit like hell, back where they had barely escaped from in Patala Lanka.

Ravana blazed with anger, asking who this Vaishravana and this Indra were to oppress Lanka, the inheritance of his clan, since a man does not become Indra by having his servants call him so, and he drew his sword. Vibhishana calmed him, pleading that the envoy was another's servant who repeated like a parrot what he was told and that killing the helpless brings infamy, so the envoy's life was spared and he was put out of the court.

Hearing the report, Vaishravana marched out with his Yakshas, as the Vidyadharas of his line were called, and Ravana came out with Kumbhakarna and his brothers to meet them on Mount Gunja. Many Rakshasas, Vanaras and Yakshas fell; when the Yakshas pressed forward, Ravana himself entered the field under a white umbrella in rainbow-hued armour and swept through their army like a lion among elephants, sparing no man, chariot, horse or vimana from his arrows.

Seeing Ravana, Vaishravana felt a brother's affection and regretted the fight, as Bahubali had regretted fighting Bharata, and as the son of Ravana's mother's elder sister urged him not to sin for fleeting fortune; Ravana retorted that this was no time to hear dharma, that Vaishravana must face the sword or fall at his feet, and that if he was a keeper of wealth he could serve as Ravana's treasurer. Letting his elder strike first, Ravana cut down his arrows, and when Vaishravana's half-moon arrow broke his bow and left him chariotless, he mounted the chariot Meghanada, shattered Vaishravana's armour with meteor-like vajradandas (thunder-staves) and struck his chest with a bhindimala, and Vaishravana fell senseless and was carried to Yakshapura.

Healed by physicians, Vaishravana reflected that without valour a kshatriya is like a tree without flowers or a bull with broken horns, that karma alone is the root of joy and sorrow, and that Ravana, son of Kekasi, had become the cause of his welfare by freeing him from the noose of household life, while Kumbhakarna, the cause of the war, became the instrument of his awakening. He took Digambara initiation, practised supreme austerity and attained moksha.

Hailed by his brothers as the crown of the Rakshasa line, Ravana took nothing from the vanquished but the splendid Pushpaka vimana, hung with jewel garlands and pearl fringes, and though he had many vimanas made by vidya he rode it with special fondness, with his parents, brothers, sons and generals, and with Mandodari and the royal ladies in the great lotus garden at its centre. Kumbhakarna followed on an elephant and Vibhishana in a chariot, with Maya and his ministers Maricha, Ambara, Vajrodara, Sarana, Sunaya, Shuka and others, as Ravana toured the earth and brought the whole southern quarter under his sway.

Seeing what looked like a motionless lotus forest on a mountaintop without a lake, Ravana asked Sumali, who, saying Namah Siddhebhyah, explained that these were ruby Jina temples with fluttering banners built by the Chakravarti Harishena, and told his story. In Kampilya, Harishena's mother Vapra, chief queen of King Simhadhvaja, held a chariot procession of the Jina every Ashtahnika, but her co-wife Mahalakshmi insisted that her Brahma-chariot go first, and Vapra vowed to fast unless the Jina's chariot led.

Unable to bear his mother's tears or to oppose his father, Harishena left for the forest, where at the hermitage of the ascetic Shatamanyu he met Madanavali, who had escaped through a tunnel with her mother Nagamati when King Kalakalpa attacked her brother Janamejaya's city of Champa; a muni had foretold she would be a Chakravarti's jewel-wife, but the ascetics, fearing scandal, sent Harishena away. Pining for her, he wandered to Sindhunandana, where he saved a crowd of women from a rampaging elephant by leaping onto its tusks and taming it, and the delighted king gave him his hundred daughters.

Vegavati, friend of Jayachandra, daughter of the Vidyadhara king Shakradhanu and Queen Dhara of Suryodaya, who had vowed to marry none but him after seeing his portrait, carried Harishena there by night through the sky and he married her; when the bride's maternal cousins Gangadhara and Mahidhara attacked, angry that she had wed a land-dweller, he routed them, and at that moment the chakra-jewel arose, making him the tenth Chakravarti. He then married Madanavali, returned to Kampilya with 32,000 crowned kings, led the Jina's chariot out first in great splendour, built jewelled temples across the land, and at last became a muni and attained moksha.

Camped near Sammeda Shikhara, Ravana was roused at dawn by a thunderous roar that sent elephants and horses into panic; his general Prahasta reported a wild, mountain-like elephant that not even Indra could capture. Ravana blew his conch, distracted the charging beast with a ball made of his upper garment, punched its brow, slipped between its tusks and mounted it, so that it stood like an obedient pupil; flowers rained from the sky, and he named it Trailokyamandana (Ornament of the Three Worlds) and went on pilgrimage to Sammeda Shikhara.

Next day the wounded Vidyadhara Shakhabali, son of Sushroni and a devoted servant of Riksharaja, arrived weeping to report that ten days earlier Suryaraja and Riksharaja, relying on Ravana's might, had set out from Alankarodaya (Patala Lanka) to retake Kishkindhapura. Indra's lokapala Yama had captured Riksharaja and wounded Suryaraja, then built a prison called Naraka (hell), complete with a Vaitarani river, and thrown both brothers and all his captives into it.

Ravana marched at once, drove off the guards of the artificial hell dug near Kishkindhapura, freed Suryaraja, Riksharaja and all the captives and destroyed it; Vibhishana scattered Yama's troops, and Ravana felled Yama's charioteer and then Yama himself. Yama abandoned his post as guardian of the south and fled with his family to Rathanupura, telling Indra that Dashanana, grandson of Sumali, had beaten first Vaishravana, now a monk, and then him; Indra, Yama's son-in-law, was dissuaded by his ministers from war, consoled Yama and gave him the kingdom of Asurasangita, and both soon forgot the humiliation in their pride.

Ravana gave Kishkindhapura to Suryaraja and Kishkupura to Riksharaja, and by his power the Vanaras lived in peace; then he set out to conquer the directions as kings joined him day after day. Reaching Trikutachala in the Pushpaka, he rewarded the Rakshasas with robes and jewels and entered Lanka, with its jewelled ramparts, deep moat and palaces of crystal, ruby and emerald, amid music and cries of victory, and its citizens, well-wishers of his house since the time of Ajitanatha, welcomed him with offerings; Gautama closes by teaching that merit brings glory and wealth, while the pleasures of the five senses are the soul's great enemies.