Chapter 63 — The Rod of Time

Yama heard the roar that followed the destruction of his force. He understood that Ravana had broken through the field and that his guards lay defeated.

His eyes reddened. “Bring my chariot.”

The charioteer brought it: a divine vehicle dreadful enough to shake the three worlds in the telling. It did not arrive with the splendor of Pushpaka. Its presence tightened the field around it. Death stood before it, separate in the source from Yama himself, holding spear and mace. Beside Yama stood the Rod of Time, a weapon whose mere appearance drew the life-breath from living beings; with it were the Nooses of Time and a mace bright as fire. These were not ornaments of office. They were the powers by which an existence ends when its time has come.

The gods trembled at the sight. Ravana's ministers fled, saying they could not fight there. Ravana did not flee. He stood alone before Yama's chariot.

Yama came at him with lances and heavy spears. Ravana answered with a rain of arrows. The field that he had cleared with the Pashupata closed around him again: chariot, driver, Death, and Yama's own weapons answering the lone rakshasa. The blows forced him back; then he recovered and struck Death, the charioteer, and Yama himself with swift shafts. Flame rose from Yama's mouth with his anger. Death and Time, seeing the battle, surged toward violence.

Death spoke first. “Let me go. I will kill this sinful rakshasa. It is not my nature to let such a one escape.”

He named the powerful beings he had seen fall: kings, sages, gods' enemies, serpents, and, at the turning of an age, even the earth with its mountains, rivers, forests, and sea. Ravana's strength did not place him beyond that order.

Yama answered, “Stay back. I will strike him myself.”

He raised the Rod of Time. Flame gathered around it. Everyone near the field fled, and the gods recoiled as he held it above Ravana.

Then Brahma appeared.

“Do not let it fall,” he told Yama. “I gave this rakshasa a boon. My word must not be made false.”

The problem was not mercy for Ravana, nor the claim that he had overcome death by his own power. Brahma described an impossible collision of promises. The Rod of Time was unfailing against every living being; if it struck Ravana and Ravana died, the boon would fail. If it struck and he did not die, the weapon's nature would fail. Either way, the order Brahma had spoken would become untrue.

Yama, who upheld that order, drew the weapon back. The fire gathered around the rod did not fall. The nooses remained where they were. The threat withdrew from the field because a creator's word had bound even the god who administered its consequence.

Ravana took the withdrawal for victory. Bloodied and battered from the battle, he proclaimed himself the conqueror of Yama and returned to Pushpaka. The boast stood in his mouth. Yama had not become his subject, and the boundary of death had not vanished.

Ravana turned Pushpaka away from the court of the dead and carried the boast with him. Behind it lay the fact he would not acknowledge: the encounter had not made him lord of Yama's realm. It had shown how much disorder could enter the world when a boon was granted, and how narrowly its force was contained.

At Rama's court, Agastya did not soften the irony. Ravana mistook every limit he could not break for a crown he had won.