The Death of Indrajit

Of all Rāvaṇa’s champions, the greatest and the most dangerous still remained: Indrajit, the conqueror of Indra, the master of sorcery, the one who had bound Rāma and Lakshmaṇa with the serpent-darts and would have slain them but for Garuḍa. And the death of Indrajit is the breaking of the backbone of Lankā’s defence, the fall of its mightiest warrior, and it came about through a combination of cunning matched against cunning, of Lakshmaṇa’s valour and Vibhīshaṇa’s knowledge, and it turned upon one of the cruelest of all Indrajit’s deceptions.

For Indrajit, seeing the war going against Lankā, resorted to his deepest sorceries, and among them he worked a deception aimed, like Rāvaṇa’s illusion of Rāma’s head, at breaking the enemy’s spirit through a counterfeit of grief.

Indrajit conjured, by his magic, an illusion of Sītā, a perfect phantom of the captive queen, and he brought this phantom out where the vānara host could see it, and then, before their horrified eyes, he slew it, struck off the head of the false Sītā, murdered the phantom of Rāma’s wife in full view of the army, so that the vānaras should believe that Sītā herself was dead, that the whole purpose of the war was lost, that the queen they had come to rescue was slain, and should despair.

And the deception worked its horror, for the vānaras, seeing what they took to be Sītā murdered before them, were plunged into grief and despair, and the news reached Rāma, and even Rāma was stricken, believing for a terrible moment that Sītā was dead and all his labour come to nothing. The illusion spread its poison of despair through the host, exactly as Indrajit had intended, threatening to break the army’s spirit at the very moment when victory was near.

But Vibhīshaṇa knew better, and here again the righteous brother’s knowledge proved decisive. Vibhīshaṇa understood Indrajit’s sorceries, understood the workings of Lankā, and he saw through the deception at once. It is an illusion, he told Rāma and the grieving host; it is a phantom, a trick of Indrajit’s magic; Rāvaṇa would never permit Sītā to be killed, for he desires her still and holds her as his prize; the Sītā you saw slain was a conjured phantom, not the true queen, who lives yet in the Ashokavana.

Do not despair; do not believe the illusion; it is a stratagem meant to break your spirit, and you must not let it. And more than that, Vibhīshaṇa understood the true purpose behind the illusion, and it was this understanding that turned the deception against its maker.

Indrajit, Vibhīshaṇa explained, has worked this illusion not merely to grieve you but to buy himself time and cover, for he intends now to perform a secret sacrifice, a rite at the shrine of Nikumbhilā, by which he will gain a boon that will make him invincible, unbeatable by any foe. If he completes that sacrifice, he cannot be defeated; but the rite has a weakness, for while he performs it he is vulnerable, and if he is attacked and the sacrifice is interrupted before it is complete, then the boon is lost and he can be slain.

The illusion of Sītā’s death was meant to occupy us with grief while he slips away to complete the rite; we must not be occupied; we must strike at the sacrifice before it is finished.

And so Lakshmaṇa was sent, guided by Vibhīshaṇa, to the secret shrine of Nikumbhilā, to find Indrajit at his sacrifice and to interrupt it and to slay him before the rite could make him invincible. It was a desperate and a crucial errand, for on it hung the whole war: if Indrajit completed his rite, he would be unbeatable and Lankā might yet prevail; if Lakshmaṇa could reach him and stop him and kill him, the greatest of the demon champions would fall and the war would be all but won.

Lakshmaṇa went, with Vibhīshaṇa to guide him and a force of vānaras, to the hidden shrine, and there they found Indrajit at his dark sacrifice, and they fell upon him and interrupted the rite before it could be completed.

And then followed the greatest single combat of Lakshmaṇa’s life, for Indrajit, his sacrifice broken, his invincibility lost, turned in fury upon those who had interrupted him, and he and Lakshmaṇa fought a duel of tremendous and prolonged ferocity, the master of sorcery against the devoted brother, and it was a combat worthy of both, long and terrible and closely matched, the two of them contending with every weapon and every art, neither able for a long while to master the other.

Indrajit was the mightier in sorcery, and he was fighting for his life and for Lankā’s last hope; Lakshmaṇa was fighting for Rāma and for Sītā and for the whole cause of dharma, sustained by his devotion and guided by Vibhīshaṇa’s knowledge; and the two of them fought until the shrine and the field around it shook with the fury of their contention.

And at the last, Lakshmaṇa prevailed. Summoning all his power, invoking a mighty weapon, sustained by the righteousness of his cause and the devotion that was his whole strength, Lakshmaṇa loosed the fatal shaft, and it struck Indrajit, and the conqueror of Indra, the master of sorcery, the mightiest of Rāvaṇa’s champions, fell dead upon the field, his head struck off, his terrible power ended at last.

The greatest warrior of Lankā was slain, the backbone of its defence broken, its last real hope of victory destroyed, and Lakshmaṇa had accomplished the deed on which the whole war had turned. The fall of Indrajit was the decisive blow, and the tellers mark it as such, for with his death the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt. Lankā’s mightiest was gone; its sorceries were spent; its champions were fallen; only Rāvaṇa himself remained, and Rāvaṇa, for all his might, was one, and had already been defeated once and spared.

The death of Indrajit meant the death of Lankā’s hope, and everyone on both sides knew it.

And it broke Rāvaṇa utterly, for Indrajit was his greatest son, his mightiest warrior, the last real bulwark of his kingdom, and to lose him was to lose everything but his own person and his pride. The tellers give us Rāvaṇa’s grief and rage at the death of Indrajit as the most terrible of all his griefs, for now he had lost his brother Kumbhakarṇa and his son Indrajit and champion after champion, his whole house emptied, his whole strength spent, and nothing left between him and the doom but himself.

And out of that grief and rage, that final desperation, Rāvaṇa resolved at last to go out himself, in his full and final power, to meet Rāma in the last combat, to stake everything on his own might in a last duel with the champion of dharma, having nothing left to send and no one left to fight for him, the last demon standing against the doom that had consumed all the rest.