The war between Dasa and Govinda

The war between Dasa and Govinda is a cycle of border raids, reprisals, and failed peace efforts that exposes the cost of Dasa’s divided loyalties. His fear for his son Ravana gives a private urgency to public duty, but each attempt to defend his family and kingdom deepens the conflict he hopes to contain. The war ultimately reaches the capital, where Dasa is defeated and finds his wife Pravati and their son in enemy hands.

Origins and Dasa’s First Reprisal

Dasa’s commitment to retaliation grows from an intimate fear rather than a desire for territory or renown. As he rides to answer an attack, he understands that allowing the taking of cattle and people without resistance could invite further incursions, eventually placing Ravana in danger. The prospect of losing his son moves him more powerfully than concern for property, subjects, or his father’s reputation. His sense of duty is therefore inseparable from his love and fear as a father.

Dasa fails to catch and punish Govinda’s raiders. To demonstrate resolve, he crosses the border himself, damages a neighboring village, and carries off cattle and a few enslaved people. Returning after many days, he has won a reprisal but gained no peace. In meditation, he recognizes the contradiction at the heart of his response: his growing attraction to contemplation and inaction is matched by an equally strong attachment to Ravana, which demands action. In pursuing justice, he has already frightened villagers and harmed people who were not responsible for the original raid; he foresees that retaliation will breed further retaliation until warfare takes hold of the country.

Escalation and Division at Court

The raids continue, repeatedly drawing Dasa into expeditions for defense and reprisal. When Govinda’s forces withdraw, Dasa’s soldiers turn against people across the border. Armed men become increasingly familiar in the capital, and frontier villages acquire permanent garrisons. Military preparations intrude on Dasa’s days; he grieves for the dead and for those caught in the fighting, as well as for the garden, books, and quiet life that he must neglect.

Dasa considers seeking mediation through a neighboring prince and says he would accept peace even if it required surrendering pastures and villages. His proposal meets resistance from both Gopala and Pravati. In their quarrel, Pravati argues that Govinda would exploit Dasa’s willingness to make concessions, extracting territory and people through successive treaties before attacking again once Dasa was weakened. She frames the stakes not as the worth of individual herds or villages but as the survival of the whole kingdom, and insists that Dasa must recognize what he owes his dignity, wife, and son. Her forceful defense of resistance leaves Dasa sorrowful rather than persuaded.

The disagreement becomes a political division. Dasa and a few older Brahmans absorbed in meditation form a small peace party; Pravati and Gopala lead the majority of priests and have the support of all the army officers. The country arms while the neighboring state does the same. The chief huntsman teaches Ravana archery, and Pravati takes the boy with her on inspections of the troops. The domestic fear that first propelled Dasa into war is now visibly incorporated into the kingdom’s preparations.

The Failure of Conciliation

Dasa sometimes thinks of the forest where he had once lived as a poor fugitive and of the old hermit who had lived there in contemplation. He wonders whether he might revisit the yogi for counsel, but does not know whether the man is still alive or would advise him. Even the possibility of guidance seems unable to alter events. Dasa’s reflections suggest that wisdom and meditation may flourish at life’s margins, while those who struggle within events must act and suffer without being able to step outside their consequences.

Govinda’s incursions grow more frequent and brazen. Dasa sees a possible route to peace in an alliance with the powerful Rajah of Gaipali, who is favorably disposed toward him. But the Rajah is also Govinda’s kinsman and politely rejects Dasa’s efforts to win him over. With that opening closed, Dasa has little hope of restoring peaceful relations. He almost longs for the accumulated crisis to break, since he can no longer imagine averting it.

On another visit to the Rajah of Gaipali, Dasa exchanges courtesies without making progress. He continues to counsel patience and moderation at home, but his advice has lost its former confidence. His council is now divided over whether the next raid should be answered with an invasion or whether Dasa should wait for Govinda to launch a larger attack, making the other ruler’s responsibility for breaking the peace clear to the population and to neutral observers.

The Attack on the Capital and Defeat

Govinda ends the debate with a major raid designed to draw Dasa away. Dasa rides toward the frontier with the cavalry captain and his best troops, while Govinda’s main force invades the country, storms the capital’s gates, and lays siege to the palace. When Dasa hears what has happened, he turns back, knowing that Pravati and Ravana are surrounded and that fighting has spread through the city streets.

The family danger that had given Dasa’s earlier reprisals their urgency now transforms him into a forceful defender. He urges his men homeward, fights through the streets to reach the palace, and continues until he collapses at twilight, exhausted and wounded. His return cannot save the capital: when he regains consciousness, he is a prisoner, and both city and palace are in enemy hands.

The War’s Personal Cost

Govinda brings the captive Dasa into a room in the palace where Dasa had kept his scrolls. Pravati is there under guard, sitting with Ravana’s body across her knees. She does not turn to look at her husband; she remains fixed on their dead son. Dasa notices that her hair, recently raven-black, is now streaked with gray, and that she appears numbed by what has happened. The room that held Dasa’s books and learning has become the setting for the defeat of his family and kingdom.

The ending fulfills the fear that had made Dasa so eager to answer the first raid: he had imagined that unchecked violence might eventually reach Ravana, and Govinda’s assault culminates in the boy’s death. Yet the war also reveals the contradiction in Dasa’s attempt to protect those he loves by force. Reprisals could not secure lasting peace; instead, they helped establish the cycle of violence he had foreseen, while the peace he proposed failed to win support or prevent the decisive attack. In the larger account of Dasa’s life, the conflict binds love, political obligation, and suffering together, leaving no easy separation between the contemplative life he longs for and the painful consequences of action.