A story · Yoga Vasishtha · Yoga Vasishtha — Stories of the World Going On

Dama, Vyala and Kata: The Demons Who Could Not Fear

Yoga Vasishtha 4.25

The story · English

Vasishtha was speaking to Rama, whom he praised as the delight of mankind. "Do not let the story of the demons Dama and Vyala, the snare and the snake, apply to you," he said. "Learn instead the steadiness of Bhima and Bhasa, and be free of vain sorrow." Rama asked at once. "What is this parable of the snare and snake? Please tell it in full, to ease my mind and the minds of all people." Vasishtha agreed. He began with Sambara, chief of the demons and a deep sorcerer, who lived in an underground hall glittering like a sea of gems. By magic he built a city in the sky, with gardens, temples, and false suns and moons lighting its vault. Its palace overflowed with treasure.

Sambara's women sang as sweetly as the heavenly ones, his lakes held golden lotuses and swans of jewels, and his magic elephant drove off Indra's own Airavata. All wealth bowed to him, and the demons honored him as their commander. But the gods kept watching for their chance. Whenever Sambara slept or left his city, they struck his army and killed his generals one by one, as hawks kill sparrows. He appointed new generals, and the gods killed those too. Then Sambara went after them himself, up beyond the heavens. The gods fled like deer, weeping, and the Apsaras' faces were wet with tears. Sambara plundered the empty heaven, burned the cities of its guardians, and went home.

The gods hid in distant corners of the world. Yet with patient effort they went on destroying every general and fighter Sambara sent. Furious, he breathed fire from his nostrils like a burning mountain. After long searching through the three worlds, he found where the gods were hiding. Then, by sorcery, he made three huge and fearful Asuras, as terrible as death. He named them Dama, the snare, Vyala, the snake, and Kata, the mat, for the way they would trap, coil around and wrap up his enemies. They were not born from any earlier deeds, so they had no changing wishes. They were airy forms, copies of the pictures in Sambara's own mind. "Go," he told them, "and lead my armies against the gods."

The demon army rose out of the foaming sea and the caves below, armed and roaring, with bodies like flying mountains. They blotted out the sun and grew in number and size under Dama, Vyala and Kata. From the caves and forests of Mount Meru the gods poured out to meet them, like floods at the world's end. The two sides fought with fury. Heads with shining earrings fell like dimmed suns and moons. Hills were hurled, weapons broke on the mountaintops, and sparks of clashing steel scattered like stars. Ghosts as tall as palm trees clapped and danced on the heaps of dead. Rivers of blood ran over the earth, and the noise filled the whole sky like the churning of the ocean.

At first the proud demons won, and they wasted the gods' cities and forests. Fire met flood and darkness met lightning. When thunderbolts killed the demons, Sukra's art brought them back to life. The gods, now winning and now fleeing, looked to the sky for a sign. They saw only a world turned to a sea of blood, with bodies hanging in the trees like fruit. Vyala crushed the gods in his long arms. Kata and Dama caught them in their snares, and they roared like caged lions. Indra's elephant was driven off. The gods broke and ran like a river through its bank. The three pursued them like fire after wood, found no one, and returned happily to Sambara. The beaten gods went to Brahma.

Brahma appeared to them, gentle as moonlight on a reddened sea. They bowed and told him everything. He answered: "You must wait a hundred thousand years more for Hari to destroy Sambara in open battle. Today you ran from Dama, Vyala and Kata, who fight with magic and tricks. They are proud of their skill, but that pride will vanish like a reflection in a mirror. You gods have no ambition, so pain and pleasure do not move you, and patience makes you hard to beat. But anyone caught in the net of his own wanting is pulled along like a bird on a string. Even a great, learned man falls to a child once greed leads him on."

Brahma went on: "Thinking this is I and these are mine is the sickness of human life. A person who shrinks his boundless self into a small body shrinks his own greatness. Relying on things brings misery, and needing nothing brings lasting joy. While the Asuras depend on nothing, they cannot be beaten. Once they depend on things, they will die like gnats in a fire. Greed is the snare of the mind, and the greedy are caught like birds in sticky lime. So, Indra, put down your weapons and stop toiling. Feed the greed of Dama and the others instead, and let them long for total conquest. No weapon and no plan can beat an enemy until his own impatience beats him." Then Brahma vanished, like a wave drawing back into the sea.

The gods went home and rested in their pleasant houses, like bees in flowers. When they felt strong again, they beat their drums, loud as the last day. The demons rose from the underworld and met them in midair, and the second war began. Armor clashed, swords and spears flashed, and rocks and whole trees flew. The demons loosed magic floods, lions of iron with sawlike teeth, and snake weapons with eyes burning like twelve suns. The Garuda engines hurled stones that spat water and fire. Gods fell like broken rocks, and demons leaped to the sky like birds. The elephants of the gods sprayed blood-red water like a spring festival. The sky seemed an ocean of illusion, and the earth shook as if the world were ending.

So the Asuras attacked again and again, by fraud and by force. They called truces, fled and regrouped, or hid in their caves. The war lasted thirty-five years of retreat and return, then five more years, eight months and ten days. Used to fighting for so long, the demons grew proud of their strength and began to want a final victory. Their wishes became part of who they thought they were, and that made them small. They took their bodies for their whole selves and worried only about keeping them safe. They thought of ruling the earth, of good food and drink, and of keeping what they had. They went soft, like lotuses without water.

Their old courage meant nothing to them now. They hung back from the fight and shook like deer before wild elephants. Some were ready to rest content with a conqueror's foot on their heads. Like fire without fuel, they could not burn even the enemy standing in front of them. They were gnats now, bruised and beaten, and at last Dama, Vyala, Kata and the rest fled in every direction. They fell like stars at the end of an age onto mountaintops, into whirlpools and seas, into deserts, forests and burning woods, and into the nets of fishermen. Some hung in trees by their own entrails. Their helmets were smashed by the gods' stones. The demons lay scattered everywhere, torn and finished, as sea water dissolves dust.

कथा · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Bhrigu and Death · Yoga Vasishtha 4.10
• Next: Dasura in the Kadamba Tree · Yoga Vasishtha 4.48
• All of Yoga Vasishtha · Ask Krishna about it

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