A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History, and Literature c5.2101

c5.2101

VIRĀDHA. A horrible man-eating Rākshasa, son of Kāla and Satahradā. By penance he had obtained from Brahmā the boon of invulnerability. He is described as “being like a mountain peak, a man-eater, loud-voiced, hollow-eyed, large-mouthed, huge, huge-bellied, horrible, rude, long, deformed, of dreadful aspect, wearing a tiger’s skin, dripping with fat, wetted with blood, terrific to all creatures, like death with open mouth, bearing three lions, four tigers, two wolves, ten deer, and the great head of an elephant with the tusks, and smeared with fat, on the point of an iron pike, shouting with a loud voice.” Rāma, with Lakshmana and Sītā, encountered him in the Dandaka forest, when he foully abused and taunted the brothers, and seized upon Sītā. The brothers proved with their arrows that he was not invulnerable, but he caught them, threw them over his shoulders, and ran off with them as if they had been children. They broke both his arms, threw him down, beat him with their fists, and dashed him to the earth, but they could not kill him, so they dug a deep hole and buried him alive. After his burial there arose from the earth a beautiful person, who said that he was a Gandharva who had been condemned by Kuvera to assume the shape of a Rākshasa, from which Rāma had enabled him to escape. He was also called Tumburu.