Ravana's Severed Limbs Return Like Sin Committed at a Pilgrimage
Lanka Kanda, Doha 97
Doha 97 · Movement 3 of 3
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Raghupati cuts Ravana's heads and arms, together with the arrows and bows they wield. The strike is complete, yet the body refuses the conclusion. What has been severed grows again.
Tulsidas compares the renewal to sin committed at a sacred place of pilgrimage. A tirtha offers purification, but the person who carries wrongdoing into it can make the very place of cleansing witness to another stain.
So the cuts multiply without freeing the field from what they remove. Ravana's body turns sacred opportunity into repeated return, as though every touch of Rama's weapon were followed by a fresh act of refusal. The comparison shifts attention from supernatural anatomy to a familiar contradiction of sadhana. Nearness to holiness does not purify the one who uses that nearness only to continue the habit that brought him there.
Even at the place of purification, what is not surrendered can rise again as the very sin one came to wash away.
Read the passage from the Manas
तब रघुपति रावन के सीस भुजा सर चाप। काटे बहुत बढ़े पुनि जिमि तीरथ कर पाप। 97।।
Then Raghupati cut off Ravana's heads, arms, arrows, and bow; though severed many times, they grew back again, like sins committed at a place of pilgrimage.