The Slaying of Dhumraksha1SRI AUROBINDO
Translations
from Sanskrit and Other Languages
Ramayana
The Slaying of Dhumraksha1
Loud in their gladness and their lust of fight2
Shouted the forest-host3 when they beheld
The dreadful Rakshas coming forth to war,
Dhumraksha4; loud the noise of mellay clashed5,
Giants and Apes6 with tree and spear and mace
Smiting their foemen7. For the Giants hewed
Their dread8 opponents earthward everywhere9,
And they too with the trunks of trees bore down
Their monstrous foes and levelled with the dust.
(Incomplete)
The text below is absent in this edition. It was reprodiced from The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo: Set in 37 volumes.– Volume 5.– Translations.– Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1999.– Pp. 27-29.
But in their wrath increasing Lanca’s hosts
Pierced the invaders; straight their arrows flew
Unswerving, fatal, heron-winged; sharp-knobbed
Their maces smote and dreadful clubs prevailed;
The curious tridents did their work. But torn,
But mangled by the shafts, but pierced with spears
The Apes in act heroic, unalarmed,
Drew boldness from impatience of defeat;
Trees from the earth they plucked, lifted great rocks
And with a dreadful speed, roaring aloud,
Hurling their shouted names behind the blow,
They slew with these the heroes of the isle.
Down fell the Giants crushed and from their mouths
Vomited lifeblood, pounded were by rocks
And with crushed sides collapsed or by ape-teeth
Were mangled, or lay in heaps by trees o’erborne.
Some with sad faces tore their locks in grief,
Bewildered with the smell of blood and death
Some lifeless sank upon the earth. Enraged
Dhoomraksha saw the rout and forward stormed
And made a mighty havoc of the foe,
Crushing to earth their bleeding forms with axe
And javelin and mace oppressed or torn.
Some helpless died, some gave their blood to earth,
Some scattering fled the fierce pursuer’s wrath,
Some with torn hearts slept on one side relaxed
On earth’s soft bosom, some with entrails plucked
Out of their bodies by the tridents died
Wretchedly. Sweet twanged the bowstrings, lyres of war,
The sobbing of the warriors’ breath was time
And with a thunder dull, battle delivered
Its dread orchestral music. In the front
Of all that war Dhoomraksha thundered armed,
Laughing aloud, and with fast-sleeting shafts
Scattered to every wind his foes. At last
The Son of Tempest saw his army’s rout
Astonished by Dhoomraksha; wroth he saw
And came, carrying a giant crag he came,
Red-gazing, and with all his father’s force
At dire Dhoomraksha’s chariot hurled. Alarmed
Dhoomraksha saw the flying boulder come
And rearing up his club from the high car
He leaped. Down crashed the rock and ground the car
To pieces, wheel and flag and pole and yoke
And the forsaken bow. Hanuman too
Abandoning his chariot through the ranks
Opposing strode with havoc; trees unlopped
With all their boughs for mace and club he used.
With shattered heads and bodies oozing blood
The Giants fell before him. Scattering so
The Giant army Hanuman, the Wind’s
Tremendous son, took easily in his hands
A mountain’s mighty top and ran and strode
Where stood Dhoomraksha. Roaring answer loud
The mighty Giant with his club upreared
Came furiously to meet the advancing foe.
Wrathful the heroes met, and on the head
Of Hanuman the weapon many-spiked
Of dire Dhoomraksha fell; but he the Ape,
Strong in inheritance of might divine,
Not even heeded such a blow, but brought
Right on Dhoomraksha’s crown the summit huge
And all his limbs were shattered with the stroke
And like a broken mountain they collapsed
Earthward, o’erwhelmed, in-smitten, prone. The Giants left,
Survivors of that slaughter, fled alarmed
And entered Lanca by the Apes pursued
And butchered as they fled. But from that fight
Victorious, weary, rested Hanuman
Amid his slaughtered foemen and engirt
With the red rivers he had made to flow,
Praised by the host, rejoicing in his wounds.
1 Yuddha Kanda, Sarga 52, 1-4.
2 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: But in their lust of battle shouted loud,
3 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: Rejoicing, all the Apes
4 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: Dhoomraksha
5 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: High the din of mellay rose
6 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: Giant and Ape
7 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: each other
8 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: dire
9 1999 ed. CWSA, volume 5: down on every side