Weapons Fall From Hands as the Messengers of Time Cry Around Ravana
Lanka Kanda, Chhand 4
Doha 78 · Movement 2 of 3
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Pride blinds Ravana to auspicious and inauspicious signs alike. Around his march, weapons slip from warriors' hands before the enemy has touched them, as though iron itself refuses the purpose for which it is carried.
Soldiers tumble from chariots. Horses and elephants shriek, break from their companions, and flee. The ordered procession begins to unravel beneath movements no command can master.
Jackals, vultures, foxes, and dogs fill the air with terrible sound. Owls call like messengers sent ahead by Time, speaking fear into a host that continues toward battle. Nature does not conceal the verdict. Hand, vehicle, beast, earth, and night creature all announce that Ravana's force has already entered death, even while the king at its center mistakes continued motion for power.
Before Rama looses an arrow, Time disarms Ravana's march through falling weapons and the voices of creatures in the dark.
Read the passage from the Manas
अति गर्ब गनइ न सगुन असगुन स्त्रवहिं आयुध हाथ ते। भट गिरत रथ ते बाजि गज चिक्करत भाजहिं साथ ते।। गोमाय गीध कराल खर रव स्वान बोलहिं अति घने। जनु कालदूत उलूक बोलहिं बचन परम भयावने।।
Blinded by pride, he heeds neither good omens nor ill; weapons slip from the warriors' hands. Soldiers tumble from their chariots, horses and elephants shriek and bolt from their companions. Jackals, vultures and foxes cry out with terrible voices; dogs howl in thick, unbroken chorus. As if messengers of Kala himself, the owls call out words most fearsome and foreboding.