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Padma Puranaपद्मपुराण · Jain Ramayana
हिन्दी

Parva 84

The Elephant Trailokyamandana Falls Silent

Calmed by the sight of Bharata, Ravana's mighty state elephant is led into Ayodhya, then stands motionless for four days, refusing food, water and sleep.

Part of Victory and the Return to Ayodhya

Summary

Rama and Lakshmana approach the quieted elephant, win it over with gentle words and have it adorned, and the city's fear melts away. It is Trailokyamandana, once Ravana's state elephant, whose strength no Vidyadhara lord could check. Bharata, Sita and Vishalya ride it into Ayodhya in procession, and Bharata feeds the sages before eating with his family. Soon the mahouts report that the elephant has eaten, drunk and slept nothing for four days, standing like a painted image with its trunk held in its teeth, and no doctor, music or medicine can move it.

What happens

4 points

  1. Seeing the great elephant standing humbly, absorbed in dharma dhyana (meditation on the teaching), Rama and Lakshmana come slowly up to it, speak sweetly and take hold of it, ordering it to be decked in every ornament. The people's fear vanishes, and all Ayodhya talks of the elephant, Ravana's own state elephant Trailokyamandana, whose like for strength does not exist and whose charge even Vidyadhara lords could not stop.

  2. Bharata, Queen Sita and Vishalya mount the elephant and enter the city in great splendour, the other queens following on many vehicles and Shatrughna riding ahead on horseback amid music, like gods entering heaven. Bharata dismounts at the dining hall, first gives ahara dana (food offering) to the sages, then eats with his family and serves all his sisters-in-law.

  3. The mahouts come and bow to Rama and Lakshmana: since the day of its rage and calming, four days now, the elephant has taken no food or water and no sleep, standing motionless in meditation with its trunk held in its teeth, so still that people cannot tell whether it is a real elephant or a painting. It ignores their praise and pleas.

  4. They showed it to an elephant physician learned in every treatise, who could find no illness; it no longer listens to the gandharvas' songs or watches the dancers it once loved, and mantras, spells and medicines have done nothing. It shows neither greed for anything nor anger, like an offended friend who will not be won back, and the mahouts, calling it the ornament of the whole army, leave it to Rama and Lakshmana, who wonder why it broke its bonds, grew forgiving and now refuses all food.