{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry472.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry472.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry472.htm","text":"They sought the king, a mournful train,\n And cried. 'My lord, thy son is slain.\n By Lakshmau's hand, before these eyes,\n The warrior fell no more to rise.\n No time is this for vain regret:\n Thy hero son a hero met;\n And he whose might in battle pressed\n Lord Indra and the Gods confessed,\n Whose power was stranger to defeat,\n Has gained in heaven a blissful seat.\n \n \n The monarch heard the mournful tale:\n His heart was faint, his cheek was pale;\n His fleeting sense at length regained,\n In trembling tones he thus complained:\n 'Ah me, my son, my pride: the boast\n And glory of the giant host.\n Could Lakshman's puny might defeat\n The foe whom Indra feared to meet?\n Could not thy deadly arrows split\n Proud Mandar's peaks, O Indrajit,\n \n \n And the Destroyer's self destroy?\n And wast thou conquered by a boy?\n I will not weep: thy noble deed\n Has blessed thee with immortal meed\n Gained by each hero in the skies\n Who fighting for his sovereign dies.\n Now, fearless of all meaner foes.\n The guardian Gods \u00a01b will taste repose:\n But earth to me, with hill and plain,\n In* desolate, for thou art slain.\n Ah, whither hast thou fled, and left\n Thy mother, Lank\u00e1, me bereft;\n Left pride and state and wives behind,\n And lordship over all thy kind?\n I fondly hoped thy hand should pay\n Due honours on my dying day:\n And couldst thou, O beloved, flee\n And leave thy funeral rites to me?\n Life has no comfort left me, none,\n O Indrajit my son, my son.'\n \n \n Thus wailed he broken by his woes:\n But swift the thought of vengeance rose.\n In awful wrath his teeth he gnashed,\n And from his eyes red lightning flashed.\n Hot from his mouth came fire and smoke,\n As thus the king in fury spoke:\n \n \n 'Through many a thousand years of yore\n The penance and the pain I bore,\n And by fierce torment well sustained\n The highest grace of Brahm\u00e1, gained,\n His plighted word my life assured,\n From Gods of heaven and fiends secured.\n He armed my limbs with burnished mail\n Whose lustre turns the sunbeams pale,\n In battle proof gainst heavenly bands\n With thunder in their threatening hands.\n Armed in this mail myself will go\n With Brahm\u00e1's gift my deadly bow,\n And, cleaving through the foes my way,\n The slayers of my son will slay.'\n \n \n Then, by his grief to frenzy wrought,\n The captive in the grove he sought.\n Swift through the shady path he sped:\n Earth trembled at his furious tread.\n Fierce were his eyes: his monstrous hand\n Held drawn for death his glittering brand.\n \n \n There weeping stood the Maithil dame:\n She shuddered as the giant came.\n Near drew the rover of the night\n And raised his sword in act to smite;\n But, by his nobler heart impelled,\n One R\u00e1kshas lord his arm withheld:\n 'Wilt thou, great Monarch,' thus he cried,\n 'Wilt thou, to heavenly Gods allied,\n Blot for all time thy glorious fame,\n The slayer of a gentle dame?\n What! shall a woman's blood be spilt\n To stain thee with eternal guilt,\n Thee deep in all the Veda's lore?\n Far be the thought for evermore.\n Ah look, and let her lovely face\n This fury from thy bosom chase.'\n \n \n He ceased: the prudent counsel pleased\n The monarch, and his wrath appeased;\n Then to his council hall in haste\n The giant lord his steps retraced. \u00a01\n \n \n \n \n487:1 I have briefly despatched Kumbha and Nikumbha, each of whom has in the text a long Canto to himself. When they fall R\u00e1van sends forth Makar\u00e1ksha or Crocodile-Eye, the son of Khara who was slain by R\u00e1ma in the forest before the abduction of Sit\u00e1. The account of his sallying forth, of his battle with R\u00e1ma and of his death by the fiery dart of that hero occupies two Cantos which I entirely pass over. Indrajit again comes forth and, rendered invisible by his magic art slays countless V\u00e1nars with his unerring arrows. He retires to the city and returns bearing in his chariot an effigy of Sit\u00e1, the work of magic, weeping and wailing by his side. He grasps the lovely image by the hair and cuts it down with his scimitar in the sight of the enraged Han\u00fam\u00e1n and all the V\u00e1nar host. At last after much fighting of the usual kind Indrajit's chariot is broken in pieces, his charioteer is slain, and he himself falls by Lakshman's hand, to the inexpressible delight of the high-souled saints, the nymphs of heaven aud other celestial beings.\n487:1b The Lokap\u00e1las are sometimes regarded as deities appointed by Brahm\u00e1 at the creation of the word* to act as guardians of different orders of beings, but more commonly they are identified with the deities presiding over the four cardinal and four intermediate points of the compass, which, according to Manu V.96, are 1, Indra, guardian of the East; 2, Agni, of the South-east; 3, Yama, of the South; 4, S\u00farya, of the South-west: 5, Varuna, of the West; 6, Pavana or V\u00e1yu, of the North-west; 7, Kuvera, of the North; 8, Soma or Chandra, of the North-east.","title":"BOOK VI: Canto XCIII.: R\u00e1van's Lament.","type":"page"}