A fierce rakshasa grabbed Sita and carried her away. Rama and Lakshmana shot him, and he dropped Sita but grabbed them instead and ran deeper into the forest.
"I am Viradha!" the rakshasa shouted, "Weapons cannot kill me."
Rama and Lakshmana slashed off Viradha's arms with their swords.
Viradha collapsed, but he did not die.
"Bury me in a pit!" groaned Viradha. "There I can die."
So they buried Viradha in a pit.
A celestial being then arose from the earth.
"I am Tumburu," he said, "a gandharva cursed to live as a rakshasa. You freed me from that existence!"
Inspired by: Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana by Devdutt Pattanaik
Notes: This story is on p. 121 of the book. In Valmiki's Ramayana, this is the Aranya Kanda (Book 3), sarga 2.
The attack on Viradha:
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