Itihāsa / Rāmāyaṇa chronicle / Yuddha · 44 of 50
44. Rāvaṇa falls
Yuddha (युद्ध)
Rāvaṇa comes out. The poem gives him a fight worthy of the size it gave his city, and then the fight ends. Rāma kills him. The page says that Rāvaṇa falls. It does not describe the killing. What it keeps is the hour after. Vibhīṣaṇa mourns, and is ashamed of mourning, and Rāma tells him to stop being ashamed. A brother is to be honored in death. Perform the rites. The enemy was a great king, a devotee of Śiva, a scholar, and the thief of another man's wife. None of those clauses cancels the others.
The instruction to mourn is the poem's last word on Rāvaṇa, and it is characteristic. Rāma has not been clean at every step. He is clean in this sentence. The man on the ground is not a lesson in how to hate. He is a dead king whose brother is standing right there, newly appointed to a throne of ashes.
Sītā is still in the grove. The war, as a war, is over. The marriage is not restored by a death. The next sitting is the one the victory does not get to skip.
नेपालीमा
रावण निस्क्यो। रामले मार्नुभयो। यो पृष्ठले रावण ढल्यो भन्छ। मारिने तरिका लेख्दैन। विभीषणले शोक गरे, र लाज मान्थे। रामले भन्नुभयो, दाजुभाइको मृत्युमा सम्मान गर। संस्कार गर। शत्रु महान राजा थिए, शिवका भक्त, विद्वान, र अर्काकी पत्नीका चोर। कुनै खण्डले अर्को खण्ड काट्दैन। युद्ध सकियो। विवाह मृत्युले फर्किँदैन।