{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry463.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry463.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry463.htm","text":"Thus from their flight the V\u00e1nars turned,\n And every heart for battle burned,\n Determined on the spot to die\n Or gain a warrior's meed on high.\n Again the V\u00e1nars stooped to seize\n Their weapons, rocks and fallen trees;\n Again the deadly fight began,\n And fiercely at the giant ran.\n Unmoved the monster kept his place:\n He raised on high his awful mace,\n Whirled the huge weapon round his head\n And laid the foremost V\u00e1nars'dead.\n Eight thousand fell bedewed with gore,\n Then sank and died seven hundred more.\n Then thirty, twenty, ten, or eight\n At each fierce onset met their fate,\n And fast the fallen were devoured\n Like snakes by Garud's beak o'erpowered.\n Then Dwivid from the V\u00e1nar van.\n Armed with an uptorn mountain, ran,\n Like a huge cloud when fierce winds blow,\n And charged amain the mountain foe.\n With wondrous force the hill he threw:\n O'er Kumbhakarna's head it flew,\n And falling on his host afar\n Crushed many a giant, steed, and car.\n Rocks, trees, by fierce Han\u00fam\u00e1n sped,\n Rained fast on Kumbhakrna's head.\n Whose spear each deadlier missile stopped,\n And harmless on the plain it dropped.\n \n \n Then with his furious eyes aglow\n The giant rushed upon the foe,\n Where, with a woody hill upheaved,\n Han\u00fam\u00e1n's might his charge received.\n Through his vast frame the giant felt\n The angry blow Han\u00fam\u00e1n dealt.\n He reeled a moment, sure distressed,\n Then smote the V\u00e1nar on the breast,\n As when the War-God's furious stroke\n Through Krauncha's hill a passage broke. \u00a01\n Fierce was the blow, and deep and wide\n The rent: with crimson torrents dyed,\n Han\u00fam\u00e1n, maddened by the pain,\n Roared like a cloud that brings the rain,\n And from each R\u00e1kshas throat rang out\n Loud clamour and exultant shout.\n Then Nila hurled with mustered might\n The fragment of a mountain height;\n Nor would the rock the foe have missed,\n But Kumbhakarna raised his fist\n And smote so fiercely that the mass\n Fell crushed to powder on the grass.\n Five chieftains of the V\u00e1nar race \u00a02\n Charged Kumbhakarna face to face,\n And his huge frame they wildly beat\n With rocks and trees and hands and feet.\n Round Rishabh first the giant wound\n His arms and hurled him to the ground,\n Where speechless, senseless, wounded sore,\n He lay his face besmeared with gore.\n Then N\u00edla with his fist he slew,\n And S'arabh with his knee o'erthrew,\n Nor could Gav\u00e1ksha's strength withstand\n The force of his terrific hand.\n At Gandham\u00e1dan's eager call\n Rushed thousands to avenge their fall,\n Nor ceased those V\u00e1nars to assail\n With knee and fist and tooth and nail.\n Around his foes the giant threw\n His mighty arms, and nearer drew\n The captives subject to his will:\n Then snatched them up and ate his fill.\n There was no respite then, no pause:\n Fast gaped and closed his hell-like jaws:\n Yet, prisoned in that gloomy cave,\n Some V\u00e1nars still their lives could save:\n Some through his nostrils found a way,\n Some through his ears resought the day.\n Like Indra with his thunder, like\n \n \n The God of Death in act to strike,\n The giant seized his ponderous spear,\n And charged the foe in swift career.\n Before his might the V\u00e1nars fell,\n Nor could their hosts his charge repel.\n Then trembling, nor ashamed to run,\n They turned and fled to Raghu's son.\n \u00a0\u00a0 When B\u00e1li's warrior son \u00a01b beheld\n Their flight, his heart with fury swelled.\n He rushed, with his terrific shout,\n To meet the foe and stay the rout.\n He came, he hurled a mountain peak,\n And smote the giant on the cheek.\n His ponderous spear the giant threw:\n Fierce was the cast, the aim was true;\n But Angad, trained in war and tried,\n Saw ere it came, and leapt aside.\n Then with his open hand he smote\n The giant on the chest and throat.\n That blow the giant scarce sustained;\n But sense and strength were soon regained.\n With force which nothing might resist\n He caught the V\u00e1nar by the wrist,\n Whirled him, as if in pastime, round,\n And dashed him senseless on the ground.\n There low on earth his foe lay crushed:\n At King Sugr\u00edva next he rushed,\n Who, waiting for the charge, stood still,\n And heaved on high a shattered hill,\n He looked on Kumbhakarna dyed\n With streams of blood, and fiercely cried:\n 'Great glory has thine arm achieved,\n And thousands of their lives bereaved.\n Now leave a while thy meaner foes,\n And brook the hill Sugr\u00edva throws.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 He spoke, and hurled the mass he held:\n The giant's chest the stroke repelled,\n Then on the V\u00e1nars fell despair,\n And R\u00e1kshas clamour filled the air.\n The giant raised his arm, and fast\n Came the tremendous \u00a02b spear he cast.\n Han\u00fam\u00e1n caught it as it flew,\n And knapped it on his knee in two.\n The giant saw the broken spear:\n His clouded eye confessed his fear;\n Yet at Sugr\u00edva's head he sent\n A peak from Lank\u00e1's mountain rent.\n \n \n The rushing mass no might could stay:\n Sugriva fell and senseless lay.\n The giant stooped his foe to seize,\n And bore him thence, as bears the breeze\n A cloud in autumn through the sky.\n He heard the sad Immortals sigh,\n And shouts of triumph long and loud\n Went up from all the R\u00e1kshas crowd.\n Through Lanka's gate the giant passed\n Holding his struggling captive fast,\n While from each terrace, house, and tower\n Fell on his haughty head a shower\n Of fragrant scent and flowery rain,\n Blossoms and leaves and scattered grain. \u00a01\n \u00a0\u00a0 By slow degrees the V\u00e1nars' lord\n Felt life and sense and strength restored.\n He heard the giants' joyful boast:\n He thought upon his V\u00e1nar host.\n His teeth and feet he fiercely plied.\n And bit and rent the giant's side,\n Who, mad with pain and smeared with gore,\n Hurled to the ground the load he bore.\n Regardless of a storm of blows\n Swift to the sky the V\u00e1nar rose,\n Then lightly like a flying ball\n High overleapt the city wall,\n And joyous for deliverance won\n Regained the side of Raghu s son.\n And Kumbhakarna, mad with hate\n And fury, sallied from the gate,\n The carnage of the foe renewed\n And filled his maw with gory food.\n Slaying, with headlong frenzy blind,\n Both V\u00e1nar foes and giant kind.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Nor would Sumitra's valiant son \u00a02\n The might of Kumbhakarna shun,\n Who through his harness felt the sting\n Of keen shafts loosened from the string.\n His heart confessed the warrior's power,\n And, bleeding from the ceaseless shower\n That smote him on the chest and side,\n With words like these the giant cried:\n 'Well fought, well fought, Sumitra's son;\n Eternal glory hast thou won,\n For thou in desperate fight hast met\n The victor never conquered yet,\n Whom, borne on huge Air\u00e1vat's back,\n E'en Indra trembles to attack,\n Go, son of Queen Sumitr\u00e1, go:\n Thy valour and thy strength I know.\n Now all my hope and earnest will\n Is R\u00e1ma in the fight to kill.\n Let him beneath my weapons fall,\n And I will meet and conquer all.'\n \n \n The chieftain, of Sumitr\u00e1 born,\n Made answer as he laughed in scorn:\n 'Yea, thou hast won a victor's fame\n From trembling Gods and Indra's shame.\n There waits thee now a mightier foe\n Whose prowess thou hast yet to know.\n There, famous in a hundred lands,\n R\u00e1ma the son of Raghu stands.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 Straight at the king the giant sped,\n And earth was shaken at his tread.\n His bow the hero grasped and strained,\n And deadly shafts in torrents rained.\n As Kumbhakarna felt each stroke\n From his huge mouth burst fire and smoke;\n His hands were loosed in mortal pain\n And dropped his weapons on the plain.\n Though reft of spear and sword and mace\n No terror changed his haughty face.\n With heavy hands he rained his blows\n And smote to death a thousand foes.\n Where'er the furious monster strode\n While down his limbs the red blood flowed\n Like torrents down a mountain's side,\n V\u00e1nars and bears and giants died.\n High o'er his head a rock he swung,\n And the huge mass at R\u00e1ma flung.\n But R\u00e1ma's arrows bright as flame\n Shattered the mountain as it came.\n Then Raghu's son, his eyes aglow\n With burning anger, charged the foe,\n And as his bow he strained and tried\n With fearful clang the cord replied.\n Wroth at the bowstring's threatening clang\n To meet his foe the giant sprang.\n High towering with enormous frame\n Huge as a wood-crowned hill he came.\n But R\u00e1ma firm and self-possessed\n In words like these the foe addressed:\n 'Draw near, O R\u00e1kshas lord, draw near,\n Nor turn thee from the fight in fear.\n Thou meetest R\u00e1ma face to faoe,\n Destroyer of the giant race.\n Come, fight, and thou shalt feel this hour.\n Laid low in death, thy conqueror's power.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 He ceased: and mad with wrath and pride\n The giant champion thus replied:\n 'Come thou to me and thou shalt find\n A foeman of a different kind.\n No Khara, no Vir\u00e1dha,--thou\n Hast met a mightier warrior now.\n The strength of Kumbhakarna fear,\n And dread the iron mace I rear\n This mace in days of yore subdued\n The Gods and D\u00e1nav multitude.\n Prove, lion of Ikshv\u00e1ku's line.\n Thy power upon these limbs of mine.\n Then, after trial, shalt thou bleed,\n And with thy flesh my hunger feed.'\n \u00a0 He ceased and R\u00e1ma, undismayed,\n Upon his cord those arrows laid\n \n \n Which pierced the stately S\u00e1l trees through,\n And B\u00e1li king of V\u00e1nars slew.\n They flew, they smote, but smote in vain\n Those mighty limbs that felt no pain.\n Then R\u00e1ma sent with surest aim\n The dart that bore the Wind-God's name.\n The missile from the giant tore\n His huge arm and the mace it bore,\n Which crushed the V\u00e1nars where it fell:\n And dire was Kumbhakarna's yell.\n The giant seized a tree, and then\n Rushed madly at the lord of men.\n Another dart, Lord Indra's own,\n To meet his furious onset thrown,\n His left arm from the shoulder lopped,\n And like a mountain peak it dropped.\n Then from the bow of R\u00e1ma sped\n Two arrows, each with crescent head;\n And, winged with might which naught could stay,\n They cut the giant's legs away.\n They fell, and awful was the sound\n As those vast columns shook the ground;\n And sky and sea and hill and cave\n In echoing roars their answer gave.\n Then from his side the hero drew\n A dart that like the tempest flew--\n No deadlier shaft has ever flown\n Than that which Indra called his own--\n Nor could the giant's mail-armed neck\n The fury of the missile check.\n Through skin and flesh and bone it smote\n And rent asunder head and throat.\n Down with the sound of thunder rolled\n The head adorned with rings of gold,\n And crushed to pieces in its fall\n A gate, a tower, a massive wall.\n Hurled to the sea the body fell:\n Terrific was the ocean's swell,\n Nor could swift fin and nimble leap\n Save the crushed creatures of the deep.\n \n \n Thus he who plagued in impious pride\n The Gods and Br\u00e1hmans fought and died.\n Glad were the hosts of heaven, and long\n The air re-echoed with their song. \u00a01\n \n \n478:1 Karttikeya the God of War, and the hero and incarnation Paras'urama are said to have cut a passage through the mountain Krauncha, a part of the Him\u00e1layan range, in the same way as the immense gorge that splits the Pyrenees under the towers of Marbor\u00e9 was cloven at one blow of Roland's sword Durandal.\n478:2 Rishabn, S'arabh, N\u00edla, Gav\u00e1ksha, and Gandham\u00e1dan.\n478:1b Angad. The text calls him the son of the son of him who holds the thunderbolt, i.e.. the grandson of Indra.\n478:2b Literally, weighing a thousand bh\u00e1ras. The bh\u00e1ra is a weight equal to 2000 palas, the pala, is equal to four kars'as, and the kars'a to 11375 French grammes or about 176 grains troy. The spear seems very light for a warrior of Kumbhakarna's strength and stature and the work performed with it.\n479:1 The custom of throwing parched or roasted grain, with wreaths and flowers, on the heads of kings and conquerors when they go forth to battle and return is frequently mentioned by Indian poets.\n479:2 Lakshman.\n480:1 I have abridged this long Canto by omitting some vain repetitions, commonplace epithets and similes and other unimportant matter. There are many verses in this Canto which European scholars would rigidly exclude as unmistakeably the work of later rhapsodists. Even the reverent Commentator whom I follow ventures to remark once or twice: Ayam s'loka prak shipta iti bahavah, 'This s'loka or verse is in the opinion of many interpolated.'","title":"BOOK VI: Canto LXVII.: Kumbhakarna's Death.","type":"page"}