Where enmity ends

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Namaste. Come, let us sit together.

Last time the setu crossed the sea, Vibhishana found refuge, and Rama sent Angada to Ravana with one last offer of peace. Ravana refused. And so the conflict at Lanka begins.

Valmiki gives the war many chapters. He was a poet of his age, and he describes it in full. We will not do that here. Tonight we will tell it the way an elder tells it to children at bedtime: who stood where, what they chose, and what it teaches us. The fighting itself we will pass through quickly. If there are children listening with you tonight, you can let them stay. Nothing in this telling will frighten them, and there is a great deal in it that they will be glad to know.

**

Day after day the two sides meet outside the walls of Lanka. Great warriors on both sides fall.

Early in the conflict, Valmiki tells of the first time Rama and Ravana face each other. Ravana is outmatched that day. His bow is broken, his crown knocked from his head, and he stands there without a weapon, worn out. Rama could end everything in that moment. He does not. Instead he says: you have fought hard today and you are tired. Go back into Lanka and rest. Come out again when you are fresh, and then you will see my strength.

Ravana goes back into his palace, humbled, not by force but by courtesy. It is a very small scene in a long war, and it tells us exactly who Rama is. He will not strike a man who has nothing in his hands. For Rama, even a battle has its dharma.

**

Ravana, watching his strongest commanders lost one by one, decides to wake his brother **Kumbhakarna**.

Kumbhakarna sleeps for months at a time, because of a boon that went strangely. It takes a great deal of noise and effort to wake him. When he is finally awake and hears what has happened, he does something surprising. He tells Ravana plainly: you did wrong. You should have listened to Vibhishana. You acted without thinking, and now trouble has come. Then, having said the truth to his brother's face, he goes out to stand by him anyway. Kumbhakarna is not a simple figure. He sees clearly, and he stays loyal. He falls to Rama's arrows, and Lanka mourns him.

**

Then comes the moment that every child who has heard the Ramayana remembers.

**Lakshmana** is struck down and lies unconscious on the field. Rama sits beside him, and all his strength seems to leave him. Valmiki gives Rama words of heartbreak here. What use is Sita, what use is victory, he says, if my brother does not rise.

The vanara physician **Sushena** says there is still hope. On a mountain in the Himalaya grow healing herbs that can bring Lakshmana back, if they are brought in time. **Hanuman** leaps north. He finds the mountain, but the herbs are not showing themselves, and he cannot tell which ones are needed. There is no time to search. So he lifts the whole peak and carries it back through the sky.

Sushena prepares the herbs. Lakshmana breathes their fragrance, opens his eyes, and sits up as if waking from sleep. Rama holds him close, and the whole camp breathes again.

This is why so many families keep a picture of Hanuman carrying the mountain. When someone we love is ill, we remember that help can come from very far away, and very fast.

**

Ravana's son **Indrajit**, the most skilled of Lanka's warriors, fights with every kind of magic and hidden weapon. In the end he meets Lakshmana, and Lanka loses him too. Ravana's grief turns to fury, and now he comes out himself.

The final contest between Rama and Ravana goes on and on. At one point Rama, tired, stands thinking. And the sage **Agastya**, who had come with the gods to watch, approaches him. Valmiki tells us Agastya teaches Rama a hymn to the Sun, the **Aditya Hridayam**, the heart of the Sun. Recite this, he says, and your strength and clarity will return. Rama recites it three times, facing the Sun, and feels renewed. Many people recite this hymn every morning even today. Some scholars think it may be a later addition to the text, and we note that here for honesty.

Indra, king of the gods, sends his own charioteer, **Matali**, with a chariot for Rama, so that the two kings meet as equals.

**

And then the end comes. Rama takes up a weapon blessed by Brahma, which Agastya had given him years before in the forest, and Ravana, king of Lanka, falls.

We will say only that, and let it rest in silence for a moment.

**

Ravana was a great man gone wrong. He was learned in the Vedas. He was a devotee of Shiva, and tradition gives him the hymn we call the **Shiva Tandava Stotra**. He had done tapas that made even the gods wonder. Valmiki does not hide any of this. There is a later tradition, loved in many homes, that Rama sent Lakshmana to sit at the dying Ravana's feet and learn from him about kingship. It is not in Valmiki, but it shows how our elders wanted us to see Ravana: as someone whose wisdom could still be honoured even at the end.

Ravana's queen **Mandodari** comes to the field and grieves for her husband. Her lament in Valmiki is full of love and pain. She says she had warned him. She remembers his greatness. It is one of the saddest passages in the poem, and it asks us to feel for the people on the other side too.

**

Now Rama turns to Vibhishana and asks him to perform his brother's funeral rites.

Vibhishana hesitates. He was cruel, Vibhishana says. He did wrong. He took another's wife. How can I honour him?

And Rama answers:

**maraṇāntāni vairāṇi nirvṛttaṃ naḥ prayojanam | kriyatām asya saṃskāro mamāpy eṣa yathā tava ||**

"Enmity ends at death. Our purpose is complete. Let his rites be done. He is mine now, as much as he is yours."

Rama also says of Ravana: he was a hero, strong, and he met his end bravely. Give him the honour due to a king.

Notice that Rama does not celebrate. There is no shouting over a fallen king. There is only the quiet work of doing what is right for the one who has gone.

So Vibhishana performs the last rites with full respect, with sandalwood and fragrant wood, with the chants of the Vedas, as befits a king of Lanka.

**

So let us gather what we heard today. Kumbhakarna spoke the truth to his brother and still stood by him. Hanuman brought the whole mountain of herbs so that Lakshmana could rise. Agastya gave Rama the Aditya Hridayam when he was tired. Ravana fell, and Rama told Vibhishana that enmity ends at death, and asked that Ravana be honoured as a king.

**One thing to take with you.** Is there an old quarrel in your life that is already over, but still sits in your heart? Tonight, think of that person once, without anger, the way Rama thought of Ravana at the end. You do not have to say anything to anyone. Just let the quarrel end inside you.

In the next episode, Sita comes before Rama, and the long road home to Ayodhya begins.

**Credits (read out):** Written by the DharmikStudio team from the Valmiki Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda, told in brief, with a note on later traditions. Narrated with an AI voice. If you hear a mistake, please use "Report a mistake" on this episode.

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• Listen: Where enmity ends
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• हिन्दी में पढ़ें
• All episodes of Ramayana: Valmiki's story, told gently