Chapter 58 — Ravana at Kailasa

After defeating Vaishravana, Ravana traveled in Pushpaka across the earth. The vehicle had moved at its master's desire—until it did not.

Near a mountain thick with bright groves, Pushpaka halted in the air. No pull of rein or command sent it forward. Ravana looked from the vehicle to the mountain below and asked his ministers what power had interrupted his course. Maricha, quick to recognize that such a stoppage had a cause, could offer none.

Then Nandi came near the vehicle. He was Shiva's attendant, standing at the mountain's threshold with a trident. His face had a simian form; he was not one of the vanaras whom Rama would later lead in war, but a guardian in Shiva's company.

“Turn back, Ravana,” Nandi said. “Shiva is on this mountain with Parvati. It has been closed to every kind of being. You may not pass.”

The words were plain. Ravana had just seized a celestial vehicle from his brother and crossed a battlefield of his own making; another boundary stood before him, spoken by an attendant whose appearance gave him an excuse for contempt.

He climbed down from Pushpaka. He saw Nandi's face and laughed, a sound like a rain-heavy cloud breaking open.

“Who is this Shiva?” Ravana said. “By what power does he play on this mountain like a king?”

Nandi did not soften the command. Anger rose in him, but he spoke first of the mockery Ravana had chosen.

“Because you despise this form and make sport of it,” he said, “beings of a similar form, equal in strength and force, will arise for the destruction of your line.”

The warning was not a sentence that stripped Ravana of choice. It met him at a moment when he could still turn back, and he treated it as though no word spoken against him could become real.

“This mountain has stopped my path,” he said. “I will tear it from the earth. Then you will learn what stands before you.”

He walked to the mountain's base and thrust his arms beneath its weight. Trees leaned. Beasts and mountain creatures scattered. Rock groaned against rock as Ravana heaved and Kailasa began to shudder above him.

On the summit Shiva saw what he was doing. No army came down the slope; no duel was required. Shiva pressed the mountain down with his toe.

Ravana's arms were caught beneath it.

His ministers watched in alarm from the ground around him. The force Ravana had used against Vaishravana could not free even his own hands. Pain tore a cry from him so immense that it filled the three worlds. Human beings heard it and feared the end of the world had come. The gods were shaken in their own appointed work. Ravana's cry crossed the distances that Pushpaka had carried him over, but it could not move the mountain.

At last Shiva was pleased by Ravana's strength and courage beneath the weight. He released Ravana's arms and spoke from the height.

“The cry you made in pain has terrified the three worlds,” he said. “By that cry you will be called Ravana, the one whose roar makes the worlds tremble.”

So Dashagriva received the name Ravana. It did not come as a reward for devotion, or as a boon, or as a sign that Shiva approved the acts that had brought him there. Shiva simply let him go where he would.

Ravana saluted the god, returned to Pushpaka, and left by the path he chose. Kailasa remained where it had been: a mountain he had shaken but not moved. Ahead lay further journeys, further violence, and another encounter that Agastya had not yet begun to tell.