Chapter 60 — Marutta's Sacrifice

After Vedavati entered the fire, Ravana returned to Pushpaka and traveled on. He came to the place where King Marutta was conducting a sacrifice. The rite was under the care of Samvarta, a rishi who served as its officiant, and its fires, offerings, and gathered sacred guests made a bright enclosure amid the open land.

The gods saw Ravana approaching and feared the protection his boon had given him. They hid among the creatures near the rite: Indra became a peacock, Yama a crow, Vaishravana a chameleon-like creature, and Varuna a swan.

Ravana came before Marutta and gave the demand he had made elsewhere: battle, or an admission of defeat.

Marutta did not receive the demand quietly. “You boast that you defeated your elder brother,” he said. “An act joined to wrongdoing is no deed to praise.” He took up his bow and prepared to answer Ravana with battle.

Samvarta stepped into his way.

“The sacrifice to Shiva is not complete,” the rishi said. “You are consecrated to its work. How can one bound to this rite abandon it for war? Battle is never certain, and this rakshasa is hard to overcome.”

Marutta heard the counsel. He lowered the bow. His return to the fire was not a confession that Ravana's demand was right; it was obedience to an obligation already laid upon him.

Ravana treated restraint as surrender. Shuka, his minister, cried out that Ravana had won. Ravana fed on the rishis gathered at the sacrifice and left the place, satisfied by the bloodshed he had caused.

Only after he had gone did the gods resume their forms. They did not declare that fear had become glory. Instead, it was the creatures that had sheltered them that mattered now.

Indra blessed the peacock with the many eye-like marks that would shine in its feathers and with joy in the rain. Yama blessed the crow against the diseases that afflict other creatures and gave it a place in the rites by which people feed their dead. Varuna gave the swan its white, moonlike color. Vaishravana gave the small creature that had sheltered him a golden hue and a head that would never lack its own store.

These were gifts of an epic kind, not the ordinary history of animals. Beneath them remained the harder scene: a king had refused Ravana in speech, yet his rite had bound his hands; Ravana had called that victory and gone on.