Surya (i.e. the sun) obliged the rakshashas by sinking below the horizon (when it was due, of course). All the rakshashas in that battlefield jumped and cried with joy. Those who were wounded and retreated to safety and licking their wounds and praying for the early sunset, forgot their wounds and jumped into the battlefield with joy and vigour. Then, a nocturnal tussle ensued between the terrific vanaras and the terrible rakshashas.
Many rakshashas and many vanaras were killed in that battle of the night.
The relentless vanaras with a terrific rage leapt forward and tore asunder by their sharp teeth, the steeds with gold ornaments on their heads. The angry vanaras dragged the elephants and those mounted on them and the chariots with their banners and flag-staffs duly breaking them to pieces with their teeth and hands. Seeing such gory, grisly, gruesome, shocking, terrible, awful and appalling acts the rakshashas were frightened.
Rama and Lakshmana killed many of the foremost of the rakshashas, visible as well as invisible, with their arrows. The dust rising from the hooves of horses and the wheels of the chariots blocked the ears and the eyes of the combatants.
On the battle of that day and night, rivers with blood started flowing from the battle field. The bodies of the killed vanaras and rakshashas, with their bodies appearing like mountains together with their spears, maces, axes. Part of those weapons were stuck and rendered impassable by the slime formed out of streams of blood, looked like a profusion of flowers on the earth.
That dreadful, distressing, appalling, tragic, horrible, formidable and fearful night became as calamitous to the vanaras as well as to the rakshashas. In that very terrible darkness, the rakshashas thrilled with rapture attacked Rama with showers of arrows. Yelling in fury, the sound of those rakshashas was like the noise of the oceans at the time of destruction of all the creatures.
The undaunted Rama in the twinkling of an eye, with six sharp arrows resembling the tongues of flame, struck down six of those rakshashas. The unconquerable Yagnashatru, Mahaparashva, Mahodara, the giant bodied Vajradamshtra, both Shuka and Sarana having been hit by Rama's astras on their vital organs retreated from the battle and somehow survived for the rest of their lives.
Rama sent quite a lot of the rakshashas to meet their maker.
The terrible night became further terrible by the sound of the kettle-drums and by the roaring sounds of the rakshashas and the vanaras. Long-tailed and black faced vanaras with their gigantic bodies crushed the rakshashas with their arms and threw their inert bodies as a feast to the jackals, vultures etc. waiting for such grub in and around the battle field.
Angada on his part struck Indrajit, his charioteer and the horses all at once. While that awful and very intense battle was going on, Indrajit a great trickster, leaving the chariot, with its horses and charioteer killed by Angada, vanished from that very spot itself. All the devas, both Rama and Lakshmana together with all sages witnessing the battle from the firmament above, were pleased with that act of Angada, the son of Vali. Since all the living beings knew the supernatural powers of Indrajit in battle, they were pleased on seeing that highly gifted rakshash being defeated by Angada. Seeing the enemy defeated, all vanaras along with Sugreeva and Vibhishana were delighted and praised Angada as a remarkable warrior. Indrajit, on the other hand, became intolerably angry, as he was defeated in the battle by an animal.
After licking his wounds, Indrajit decided to avenge his defeat by taking recourse to an invisible form, which he was capable of by the grant of a boon to him by Brahma. Even in invisible form, he could not harm Rama or Lakshmana. Intrajit decided to resort to magic. Enveloped by illusion, he sought to confuse Rama and Lakshmana and invisible to all beings through his magic arts, Indrajit made everyone see that Rama and Lakshmana were bound with a net work of arrows.
All the vanaras thought that they were seeing the two brothers being wounded by the serpentine arrows of that enraged rakshash. Not being able to hurt those two princes in his manifest form, Indrajit with his perverse mind, had recourse to magic in order to make them captive.
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