Aranya Kanda, Chapter 50

Jataayu's confrontation with Ravana

Jataayu who is slumbering away craned and stared on hearing the voicing of Sita and then he saw Ravana and even Vaidehi.

That best bird majestic Jataayu with a very sharp beak and appearing like a mountain peak, then uttered these words of expediency still perching on a tree.

"Oh, brother, now it is inapt of you to undertake a deplorable deed. I am one of those who abide by perpetual probity and avowed to truthfulness. Such as I am, oh, Decahedral-demon Ravana, I am the mightiest king of eagles known by the name Jataayu.

"Rama, the son of Dashratha, is the master of all the world, one similar to Mahendra and Varuna, the Rain-god, and the one who is connected with the well-being of all the world.

"Whom you desire to abduct now, that best lady is Sita by her name, and this glorious one is the legitimate wife of that preserver of all the worlds, namely Rama.

"How a king adhering to probity can lay his hands on the wives of others? If it is a king's wife, oh, great-mighty Ravana, she is to be safeguarded particularly.

"Reverse your filthy course, or fortuity, or mind form laying your hands on other's wives. A sagacious person does not undertake that deed by which others deplore him. As with the protection of one's own wife from somebody's laying hands on her, other person's wife is also to be protected in that way.

"If the means to gain probity, or prosperities, or even pleasures are inconspicuous in scriptures, oh, the scion of Paulastya, then even the erudite scholars will conduct themselves following the king and his demeanour.

"A king is the best repository for probity, prosperities, and pleasures, and whether it is probity or felicity or even iniquity that will emerge from the fount called king.

"Oh, prominent one among demons, deviltry and mercuriality are but natural for you demons, but how you have amassed affluence, as with an evildoer attaining an aircraft that puts him to flight to heaven.

"He whose nature is such, that nature is perhaps impossible to efface, a sermon does not dwell in the heart of an evil-minded one for a long time, indeed.

"When that great-mighty Rama has not transgressed either in your country or in your city Lanka, then how you become a transgressor in respect of that noble-souled Rama?

"If Rama of indefatigable deeds firstly eliminated Khara who is stationed at Janasthaana, and who transgressed for the sake of Shuurpanakha, tell me what in actuality is the highly overstepping behaviour of Rama in that matter, whereupon you are stealing off with the wife of such a lord of world?

"Instantly deliver up Vaidehi. Let not the disastrous and glowing fire-like eyes of Rama, which transmogrify so when he assumes fury, burn you down as the Thunderbolt of Indra once burnt the demon Vritta.

"You are unconscious that you have presently bundled a lethally venomous serpent at the fringe of your attire, and you are equally unwary that the Terminator's lasso is presently loosened around your neck.

"Oh, cultured one, that weight alone is to be shouldered by which a man is not brought down, and that repast alone is to be consumed by which nothing upsets.

"Who will undertake a deed that yields neither probity, nor deference, nor distinction but results in just physical drudgery?

"I have dedicated myself to the kingdom of my fathers and forefathers according to tradition, and sixty thousand years have elapsed since I was born.

"You are youngish whereas I am oldish, you are an armoured archer darting arrows from an air-chariot, whereas I am pensile bird in an open sky. Nevertheless, on taking Vaidehi you cannot abscond safely.

"It will be incapable of you to forcibly abduct Vaidehi when I keep an eye one her, as with the defilement of definitive Vedic scriptures by the logicians, dialecticians, materialists and suchlike non-believers, with their conjectural logic.

"Stay for a moment, oh, Ravana, if you are valiant enough you can combat with Rama who will return right away, and at his hand you will be slain and sprawling on earth in the same way as Khara sprawled earlier.

"He who eliminated demons and ogres in combats time after time, that Rama though apparently attired in jute-cloths like a meek-saint, will become a towering-inferno in a given combat, and he eliminates you very soon.

"What can possibly be done by me when those princes have gone far-off! It is beyond the scope of my fetching them in time! You knave, you who are scared of them will now be lost to my blockade, without a doubt.

"When I am alive you cannot lead away this auspicious, lotus-leave-eyed Sita, the dear queen of Rama.

"But I must definitely accomplish something to forestall you till they come, for I cannot willingly depart from here to fetch any of the two brothers, and that deed I needs must do shall be agreeable to the great-souled Rama, likewise even to Dashratha, even at the stake of my life.

"Stopoff! Stopoff! Oh, Decahedral Ravana, briefly learn of me as how I jettison you from your best air-chariot, as with the unloading of a burdensome fruit from its sepals. Oh, nightwalker, I will be giving guestship to you in a duel as long as I am alive.