Chapter 51 — The Lineage of Lanka

Agastya began with Pulastya, a sage of the ancient age, born in the line of Prajapati, the lord of creatures. Pulastya withdrew to the slopes of Mount Meru, where the hermitage of the royal sage Trinabindu stood amid a forest so beautiful that celestial women and young daughters of kings came there to play.

Their noise disturbed his discipline. In anger Pulastya declared that any young woman who came within his sight would conceive. Frightened, the others kept away. Trinabindu's daughter had not heard the warning. She entered the hermitage, heard the sound of the sage's Vedic recitation, and found her body changed by the curse. She went trembling to her father.

Trinabindu understood what had happened. He brought his daughter to Pulastya and offered her in service and marriage. Pulastya accepted. Pleased by her care, he promised that she would bear a son who would continue both their lines. Because she had heard him study the Vedas, he said, the child would be called Vishrava: one associated with what is heard.

Vishrava grew to resemble his father in discipline. Bharadvaja, a respected sage, gave him his own daughter in marriage, and to them was born Vaishravana, whose name marks him as the son of Vishrava. He would be known later as Kubera, the lord of wealth. Vaishravana practiced severe tapas—the disciplined religious practice of restraint, study, and ritual already known to the court—for thousands of years. Brahma appeared and granted his request: he would become a guardian of the world's wealth, one of the great protectors appointed beside Indra, king of the gods; Varuna, lord of the waters; and Yama, lord of the dead. Brahma also gave him Pushpaka, the celestial vehicle that would much later carry Rama home from Lanka.

Vaishravana bowed to his father. “I have received the office,” he said, “but not a place to live. Show me a dwelling where my presence will bring no harm.”

Vishrava told him of Lanka, a vast city on the mountain Trikuta beyond the southern ocean. Vishvakarma, the divine craftsman, had built it for rakshasas: powerful nonhuman beings. Its bright ramparts, gates, and defenses had been left empty when its former inhabitants fled in fear of Vishnu. Vaishravana entered the unoccupied city with his people and made it full again. From time to time he visited Vishrava in Pushpaka, shining with the dignity of his office.

Rama interrupted Agastya gently. “I had heard that Lanka belonged to the line of Pulastya. Yet you say that it had an earlier race of rakshasa rulers. Who were they, and why did they leave it?”

Agastya continued.

At a first ordering of beings, Prajapati, the lord of creatures, made beings to guard the waters. Some answered, “We will guard”; they became rakshasas. Others answered, “We will honor,” and became yakshas. The names came from the answers, and the answers made the two kinds.

Among the rakshasas were brothers named Heti and Praheti. Heti married Bhaya, the sister of Time, and their line ran through Vidyutkesha and Sukesha. Sukesha, aided by boons received in childhood, married Devavati and had three sons: Malyavan, Sumali, and Mali.

The brothers saw their father's greatness and sought a greatness of their own. They went to Meru, undertook harsh austerities, and compelled the attention of Brahma. They asked to be hard to overcome, long-lived, powerful against their enemies, and steadfast toward one another. Brahma granted the request.

Secure in that gift, they became violent. With their households and followers, they afflicted gods, sages, and other beings; sanctuaries no longer felt safe. They asked Vishvakarma for a city, and he directed them to the already-built Lanka on Trikuta, its walls and gateways bright with gold. There they settled, and the island fortress became crowded with rakshasas.

Their power did not make their conduct just. When the gods appealed for help, Shiva said that the brothers were not for him to kill and directed them to Vishnu. Vishnu promised protection to those who had been driven into fear.

Malyavan, Sumali, and Mali led their forces toward the world of the gods. Agastya did not linger over every weapon and wounded body. He told instead of the sound of chariots and beasts, the pressure of a great host, and Vishnu meeting it with bow, conch, and discus. Mali fell. Sumali and Malyavan, struck by grief and defeat, fled with the surviving rakshasas into Rasatala, the subterranean realm of the epic.

“Those were the Paulastya rakshasas,” Agastya said. “Malyavan, Sumali, Mali, and the warriors who went before them were greater in strength than Ravana would be. Yet none among gods could defeat them except Vishnu.”

Rama heard the names of the old city, the old wound, and the old flight. In Agastya's telling, Lanka was not a single inheritance. It was a place remade by power, abandonment, return, and violence—until Sumali once more sought a way upward from the world below.