Under the BanyanOld stories, illustrated and annotated

The Ramayana, issue 11 of 11

The Arrow from the Trees

Two princes without a kingdom. Two brothers locked in a feud.

Why this issue matters Rama gains his first ally: Sugriva and the vanara kingdom of Kishkindha, whose armies will search the whole earth for Sita. In return he must settle Sugriva's quarrel with Vali, and the price is a death that the epic itself debates. The lesson
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The Arrow from the Trees, cover
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The lesson of issue 11

A promise, and the questions it raises

Rama gives Sugriva his word, and keeps it. His arrow flies from the trees, and the dying Vali asks him hard questions: why strike unseen, when I had done you no harm? The comic lets Vali ask in full before Rama answers. Rama explains his promise to Sugriva and the wrong done in taking a brother's wife, and Vali, hearing him, accepts the judgment and asks forgiveness. Keeping a promise can cost someone else dearly, and the story lets that cost be questioned openly.

To think about

When you have kept a promise that someone else found hard to accept, did you give them the chance to say how it felt?

Notes on the tellings

Where this issue follows Valmiki, and where other tellings differ. Each note also appears on its page.

  • Page 3 From this issue on, Rama wears the Vaishnava namam on his forehead while Lakshmana's brow stays unmarked, so readers can tell the two bark-clad brothers apart at a glance.
  • Page 4 In Valmiki, Vali and Sugriva look as alike as the twin Ashvin gods during their first duel. So readers can tell them apart from page to page, we dress exiled Sugriva in an ochre-yellow loincloth with a green border and no crown until his coronation on page 32. King Vali wears a tall gold crown, crimson-and-gold silk and Indra's golden lotus garland, until he passes the garland to Sugriva on page 27.
  • Page 5 Rama's praise of Hanuman's mastery of the Rig, Yajur and Sama Vedas and his faultless Sanskrit appears in the traditional (vulgate) text of Valmiki's Ramayana, not in the scholars' critical edition.
  • Page 7 Hanuman casting off his mendicant disguise at Lake Pampa and carrying both brothers up the mountain on his shoulders appears in the vulgate text, not the critical edition. In the critical edition Hanuman leads them up on foot and sheds his disguise when he kindles the alliance fire.
  • Page 9 Lakshmana's famous line that he recognizes only Sita's anklets, from bowing daily at her feet, appears in the vulgate text, not the critical edition. There, Rama speaks to Lakshmana and then turns to question Sugriva without that verse. The ornaments match the ones Sita tied into her red sari and dropped in Issue 9.
  • Page 11 In Sugriva's flashback of the cavern, we follow the critical edition: he hears both the roars of the Asuras and the cry of his brother Vali from inside the cave before he seals the entrance with a boulder. In the traditional text he hears the demons' roars and no voice from Vali.
  • Page 13 Both texts agree that Vali hurled the buffalo-demon Dundubhi's body a full yojana, about eight miles, bringing Sage Matanga's curse on himself. Both agree that Rama effortlessly flicked the dry skeleton ten yojanas, about eighty miles, with his big toe, then pierced all seven sal trees, the hillside and the earth with a single arrow.
  • Page 17 On the second march to Kishkindha, Valmiki's Sarga 13 includes a brief wayside passage in which Rama and Lakshmana bow from afar to the smoke-wreathed grove of the Saptajana ("Seven Sages") hermitage before reaching the golden gate. We note it here and move on, to keep the pace brisk between the two duels.
  • Page 22 The case of Vali and Rama is one of the great moral debates in Valmiki's epic. After Rama shoots Vali from behind the sal trees, Valmiki gives both sides eloquent weight across two whole chapters. In Sarga 17 (pages 22–23) Vali asks why a prince renowned for dharma struck him unseen, when he was fighting another and had done no harm in Rama's land. In Sarga 18 (pages 24–25) Rama answers that the whole earth lies under the righteous rule of King Bharata and the house of Ikshvaku, that Vali took his living younger brother's wife Ruma, that Rama is bound by his sacred oath to Sugriva, and that kings may lawfully hunt forest creatures from cover. Vali accepts Rama's judgment, entrusts his son Angada and Queen Tara to Rama and Sugriva, and gives Indra's golden garland to Sugriva before he dies.
  • Page 29 In Valmiki's text, Tara arrives and laments before Vali speaks his final words to Sugriva and Angada. We moved her lament to come right after his passing (pages 28–29), so the debate between Vali and Rama and the parting reconciliation can flow without interruption.