Dashagriva

Kubera, knowing his father Vishrava is angry with him, sends three rakshasis to serve the sage. They rival each other in dancing and singing to please him. Vishrava is pleased and grants each a boon — and from these three women are born the lords of the rakshasas: Ravana, Kumbhakarna, Vibhishana, Khara, and Shurpanakha.

Jealous of Kubera's prosperity, Ravana and his brothers undertake terrible austerities to win boons from Brahma. Ravana stands on one foot for a thousand years, then cuts off his own heads and offers them into the fire. Brahma grants him invincibility against all beings except men — and Ravana, in his arrogance, ignores the exception.

Ravana defeats his elder brother Kubera in battle and seizes the Pushpaka vimana, the flying chariot that moves at the speed of thought. Kubera leaves Lanka for Gandhamadana, but before he goes, he speaks a curse: the vimana will not carry Ravana — it will carry the one who kills him.

Dashagriva, the ten-headed king of the rakshasas, is rampaging through the three worlds, protected by a boon that makes him invincible to gods and asuras. The gods, led by Agni, flee to Brahma for refuge — and learn that the solution has already been set in motion. Vishnu has already descended to earth, and the gods themselves must take birth among monkeys and bears to serve as his army.

Enraged by the death of his son, Ravana marches out with his rakshasa army and attacks Rama with terrifying maya — creating illusory soldiers and even false forms of Rama and Lakshmana. But when Indra sends his own chariot, driven by Matali, Rama mounts it and invokes the brahmastra, an arrow that envelops the lord of rakshasas in a mass of blazing flames from which nothing remains — not even ash.

Yudhishthira sits in the forest, weighed down by exile and loss, when the ancient sage Markandeya finds him. Instead of empty comfort, Markandeya offers a series of comparisons — Rama’s endurance in the wilderness, Indra’s victories won through allies, and the Pandavas’ own recent rescue of Draupadi from Jayadratha — to argue that Yudhishthira has no reason to despair.

Yudhishthira is weighed down by the calamity that has befallen him. Dhoumya, his priest, speaks to him — not with empty consolation, but with a catalogue of gods who once hid in the most unlikely places: Indra in a hermitage, Vishnu in a womb, Agni in water. If the great-souled ones concealed themselves to conquer their enemies, Dhoumya asks, why should a king not do the same?