When Rama first met Sugriva, the exiled vanara prince was living on a single mountain, Rishyamukha, and never leaving it. His brother Vali, the most powerful monkey king who ever lived, wanted him dead. Vali could cross oceans before breakfast. He had once carried Ravana around the world tucked under his arm. So why was Sugriva safe on one small hill, a short distance from Vali’s own capital?
The answer, as Sugriva explains in the Kishkindha Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, is a dead buffalo.
A Demon Looking for a Fight
Long before Rama came to the forest, there lived an asura named Dundubhi, who went about in the form of a gigantic buffalo. He had the strength of a thousand elephants, a boon that made him arrogant, and one great ambition: to find someone strong enough to fight him.
First he went to the Ocean. He stood on the shore and bellowed a challenge. The Ocean rose up in his personified form and politely declined. I am no match for you, he said. Go to Himavat, the king of mountains. He is your equal.
So Dundubhi stormed up to the Himalayas and began smashing peaks with his horns. Himavat appeared, white and serene, and also declined. I am a home for sages, not a wrestler. If you really want a fight, there is a vanara in Kishkindha named Vali, son of Indra. Go and challenge him.
It was the worst advice Dundubhi ever received.
Midnight at the Gates of Kishkindha
Dundubhi arrived at Kishkindha in the middle of the night, roaring like a drum (his name means exactly that, a war-drum) and tearing up the earth outside the city gates. Vali came out with his wives around him, still wearing his golden garland, and told the buffalo to go away if he valued his life.
Dundubhi did not go away. So Vali seized him by the horns.
The fight shook the ground. Vali wore a divine golden chain given to him by his father Indra, which was said to make him stronger in every battle, and he beat the buffalo with fists, knees, trees and rocks, until blood ran from the demon’s ears. Finally he lifted Dundubhi high over his head and dashed him to the earth, killing him. Then, in the full intoxication of victory, he picked up the enormous carcass and hurled it with one arm. It flew a full yojana through the night sky.
Drops of Blood on a Sage’s Ashram
As the corpse sailed over the forest, drops of blood fell from its mouth, and they landed on the ashram of the great sage Matanga, on the slopes of Rishyamukha.
Matanga came out, saw the blood spattered across his sacred grounds, and saw the huge carcass lying nearby. He knew at once, through his powers, who had thrown it. And he was furious.
He pronounced a curse. The one who had defiled this forest with blood, he said, must never enter it. If Vali ever set foot within a yojana of this ashram, he would die on the spot. And Matanga went further: any of Vali’s monkeys living in the forest were to leave by the next day, or they would be turned to stone.
The monkeys fled. Vali, when he heard, came to the sage with folded hands and begged forgiveness. Matanga would not take the curse back. From that day on, the mightiest being in Kishkindha stayed away from Rishyamukha, and would not even look toward it.
The Brother Who Came Next
The story has a second twist that Valmiki slips in almost casually. When Vali later fought the demon Mayavi, the fight that began his feud with Sugriva, Mayavi turns out to be Dundubhi’s elder brother, a son of the asura architect Maya. Vali chased Mayavi into a cave and stayed inside for a year. Sugriva, waiting outside, saw blood pour from the cave mouth, heard demonic voices, concluded his brother was dead, and sealed the cave with a boulder. When Vali finally fought his way out, he believed Sugriva had tried to entomb him, stripped him of everything, took his wife Ruma, and drove him away.
So one brother of that demon family set Vali against Sugriva, and the other, through his blood, gave Sugriva the only safe place on earth to hide. Sugriva ran straight to Rishyamukha, the single mountain Vali could not enter, and there Rama found him.
Rama’s Test
Sugriva had heard of Vali’s strength all his life, and even after swearing friendship with Rama over a sacred fire, he was frightened. Could this exiled prince in bark clothing really beat his brother? So he showed Rama what was left of Dundubhi: a mountain of dried bones lying on the hillside.
Rama, almost casually, touched the skeleton with his big toe and flicked it. It flew ten yojanas.
Sugriva was impressed but not convinced. When Vali threw it, he said, it was a fresh body, full of flesh and blood. Now it is just dry bones. That does not prove you are stronger.
So Sugriva pointed to seven great sala trees standing in a row, and told Rama that Vali could pierce any one of them with an arrow. Rama drew his bow and loosed a single arrow. It passed through all seven trees, through the hill behind them, down into the earth, and then, as Valmiki tells it, came back to rest in his quiver.
Sugriva fell at Rama’s feet. That was the moment the alliance became real, and the moment Vali’s fate was sealed.
A buffalo demon looking for a fight, a king who could not resist showing off, a few drops of blood on a hermit’s floor: the chain of events that put Rama and Sugriva on the same mountain began on a single night, years before either of them knew the other existed.