The Death of Indrajit is presented as the fall of Rávaṇ’s son after a sequence of attacks that combines battlefield force with magical deception. The account moves from Indrajit’s unseen assault on the Vánars to the destruction of an illusory Sítá, then ends with his death at Lakshmaṇ’s hand and the news reaching his father.

Background and Battle

The episode follows the deaths of Kumbha and Nikumbha. The account next names Makaráksha, Khara’s son, as a new challenger: he sallies forth against Ráma and dies by Ráma’s fiery dart. The text says that Makaráksha’s battle occupies two cantos, which the compiler passes over, making the surrounding campaign a compressed sequence of successive Rávaṇ-aligned fighters falling in battle.

Indrajit then returns to the fighting using magic to become invisible. From that concealed position he kills countless Vánars with arrows described as unerring. He withdraws to the city, but his next appearance shifts the attack from unseen slaughter to a spectacle staged before the opposing force.

The Illusion and Indrajit’s Death

Indrajit comes back in his chariot with a magical image of Sítá beside him, depicted as weeping and wailing. In view of the enraged Hanúmán and the Vánar host, he seizes the image by the hair and cuts it down with his scimitar. The scene gives the apparent destruction of Sítá a public witness: Hanúmán and the gathered warriors see the act, although the figure is an illusion rather than Sítá herself.

The fighting continues. Indrajit’s chariot is eventually broken to pieces and his charioteer is killed; after further combat, Indrajit himself falls to Lakshmaṇ. The account records the outcome plainly, without detailing the final exchange or the weapon that kills him. His death thus follows the dismantling of the vehicle that carried him into battle and the loss of the charioteer beside him.

News and Aftermath

The next canto is titled Rávaṇ’s Lament. Its opening image is a mournful company seeking the king to tell him that his son has been slain by Lakshmaṇ before their eyes. The report makes the consequence immediate: the battlefield death becomes a father’s bereavement, and Indrajit’s fall supplies the occasion for the lament that follows.

The episode’s sequence sets two kinds of threat against one another. Indrajit first attacks from a position his enemies cannot see, then makes a false image of Sítá visible to them; the visible spectacle is deception, while the final fact is his own death. The compiler’s brief account does not supply the full battle narrative, but it preserves the reversal from Indrajit’s magical assault to the report of his defeat and the grief it brings to Rávaṇ.