Vali (Ramayana) - Early Life

Early Life

Vali was famous for the boon that he had received, according to which anyone who came before him lost half his strength to Vali, thereby making Vali invulnerable to any enemy. Once Ravana called Vali for a fight when Vali was doing his regular Sandhyavandanam. He took Ravana in his tail and took him around all the world. Humbled, Ravana called for a truce. It is said in the Ramayana that Vali was very brave and courageous. Before dawn he used to go from the Eastern coast of sea to the Western coast and from the Northern coast of the sea to the Southern coast to pay his homage to Surya - the sun-god. He was so brave and powerful that on his way to pay homage to Surya, he used to toss the mountain peaks upward and catch them as if they were play balls. Also after completing the tedious task of paying homage to the sun god in all the four directions, when he used to return to Kishkindha he does not feel any tiredness .

Vali was the husband of Tara. As one myth goes, fourteen types of gems or treasures were produced from the churning of ocean. One gem is that various Apsaras (divine nymphs) were produced and Tara was an Apsara produced from the churning of ocean. Vali who was with the devas, helping them in the churning of ocean, took Tara and married her.

Vali was very courageous this can be understood from the fact that, when Tara tried to stop him and begged him to not to go to fight Sugriva, by saying that it is a God (Rama) who is helping Sugriva and has come to Sugriva’s rescue. Vali replied to Tara that even if he is fighting against a God he can’t listen to a challenge for a fight and remain quiet. He adds that even if the caller for the fight had been his own son Angada he would still go to fight.

Vali had been known as a good and pious vanara-king, but had been too outraged to heed his brother Sugriva after his brother had sealed the entrance to a cave in which Vali was fighting a rakshasa named Mayavi. Sugriva had mistaken the blood flowing out of the cave to be his brother's, blocked the entrance to the cave with a boulder and left for Kishkindha, assuming that his brother was dead. When Vali had emerged victorious over the rakshasa, he had found that the entrance to the cave was blocked. He journeyed back to kingdom to find Sugriva ruling in his place. Sugriva tried to explain the situation to Vali, but Vali, enraged, would not listen. Vali then nearly kills Sugriva, except that Sugriva was able to escape Vali's grasp. Sugriva barely escaped from the kingdom. When Vali chased Sugriva out of his kingdom, he also claimed Sugriva's main wife, Rumā. Sugriva fled into the forest where he eventually meets Rama and Lakshmana.