Vali Goes to Battle Saying Death by Rama Would Give Him a Master
Kishkindha Kanda, Doha 7
Doha 7 · Movement 2 of 2
Keep this contemplation
Preserve, print, or share
Vali hears Tara's warning but calls his beloved fearful. Raghunatha, he says, sees all beings with equality. The power beside Sugriva therefore does not appear to him as a partisan danger that must change his course.
Then Vali looks directly toward the possibility of death. If Rama should kill him, that very shaft would make him sanatha, no longer without a lord, but one who has found his true master.
Vali still leaves Tara's counsel behind and goes out to fight his brother. Yet his answer preserves a striking tension. He trusts Rama's equal vision, and in the same breath says that death at Rama's hand would end his condition of being without a lord. The warrior advances toward battle with the word master already present within his speech.
Vali refuses to turn back, yet he walks toward battle already naming Rama as the master death may reveal.
Read the passage from the Manas
कह बालि सुनु भीरु प्रिय समदरसी रघुनाथ। जौं कदाचि मोहि मारहिं तौ पुनि होउँ सनाथ।।7।।
Bali replied, 'Listen, dear fearful one. Raghunatha sees all beings equally. If by some chance he should slay me, then all the more shall I become sanaatha, one who has found his true Master.'