In the story
The two brothers ride out in the general sortie of Rāvaṇa's sons that follows Kumbhakarṇa's death. Narāntaka is alone among the champions in fighting on horseback, with a lance, and he cuts lanes through the vānara host wherever he turns. Aṅgada calls him off the slaughter of lesser fighters and takes him on; the lance shatters against Aṅgada's chest, and Vālī's son kills first the horse and then the rider with his fist.
Devāntaka, enraged by his brother's death, closes with Aṅgada with an iron beam. Hanumān and Nīla join in, and the fight becomes one of the wildest tangles in the sixth book — clubs, crags and fists in a confusion the poem does not try to keep tidy — before Hanumān shatters Devāntaka's skull with a blow of his hand.
The sortie
This engagement is the moment the war stops being a sequence of duels and becomes a melee. The poem brings out five of Rāvaṇa's kinsmen at once, mixes them into the vānara commanders, and kills all of them in a few chapters. After it, Rāvaṇa has only Indrajit and himself.
The melee
This is where the war stops being a series of duels. Five of Rāvaṇa's kinsmen come out at once, mix with the vānara commanders, and are killed in a few chapters — after which the king has only Indrajit and himself.
Further reading
- Bose, Mandakranta. The Ramayana Revisited. Oxford University Press, 2004
- Goldman, Robert P. The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Princeton University Press, 1984
- Nagar, Shanti Lal. Genesis and Evolution of the Rama Katha in Indian Art, Thought, Literature and Culture. B.R. Publishing, 2005
- Ramanujan, A. K. The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Oxford University Press, 1999
- Richman, Paula. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia. University of California Press, 1991
See also
- Rāvaṇa — Rāvaṇa is the ten-headed rākṣasa king of Laṅkā in the Rāmāyaṇa, a brahmin's son, a scholar and an ascetic protected by a boon against every being except man, who carries off Sītā and is destroyed for it.
- Aṅgada — Aṅgada is the son of Vālī and Tārā in the Rāmāyaṇa, made crown prince of Kiṣkindhā at his father's dying request, who led the southern search and went as Rāma's envoy to Rāvaṇa's court.
- Hanumān — Hanumān is the vānara minister of Sugrīva in the Rāmāyaṇa who leaps the ocean to find Sītā in Laṅkā and burns the city, and who became in later devotion the model of service and one of the most widely worshipped deities in India.
- Atikāya — Atikāya is the colossal son of Rāvaṇa in the Rāmāyaṇa, armoured by Brahmā and schooled in the divine weapons, killed by Lakṣmaṇa only when the wind god whispered the secret of the armour.
- Yuddha Kāṇḍa — The Yuddha Kāṇḍa is the sixth and longest book of the Rāmāyaṇa, covering the bridging of the sea, the siege of Laṅkā, the deaths of Kumbhakarṇa, Indrajit and Rāvaṇa, Sītā's ordeal by fire and the return to Ayodhyā.
- Kumbhakarṇa — Kumbhakarṇa is Rāvaṇa's giant brother in the Rāmāyaṇa, cursed to sleep for half the year, who woke to tell his brother the war was unjust and then went out and fought it for him.
- Mahodara — Mahodara is the courtier-general of Laṅkā in the Rāmāyaṇa who answered Kumbhakarṇa's blunt warning with flattery, and proposed that Rāvaṇa break Sītā by announcing Rāma's death.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.