Lanka Kaanda
183 - Encounter between Laksmana and Ravana
Chaupais
Description
"Pooh! You are making the monkeys and bears your target, O vile wretch; look at me, I am your death." "It is you whom I have been looking for, you slayer of my son. Today I will soothe my heart by killing you." So saying he discharged a flight of fierce arrows; but Laksmana shivered them into a hundred pieces each. Nay, Ravana hurled upon him myriads of other missiles, but Laksmana foiled them all by reducing them to particles as small as sesamum seeds. Again, Laksmana assailed him with his own shafts, smashing his chariot and killing the charioteer. Nay, each of his ten heads he transfixed with a hundred arrows, which seemed like serpents boring their way into the peaks of a mountain. With a hundred arrows more he struck him in the breast: he fell senseless to the ground. On regaining his consciousness the mighty demon rose again and hurled a lance that had been bestowed on him by Brahma (the Creator).