Ram Setu: The Building of the Bridge

Yuddha Kanda, 22.1

Rama's army of vanaras reached the southern shore and looked across the strait to Lanka. The sea would not part for grief or rank; Rama, refused three days of prayer, bent his bow toward the ocean itself until Sagara, lord of the waters, rose and begged forgiveness — offering instead to hold firm whatever the vanaras built.

Yuddha Kanda, 22.44

Nala, son of the divine architect Vishvakarma, stepped forward: he alone, he said, carried his father's gift of building. Under his direction the vanaras tore down hills and dragged trees to the shore, and the work of the bridge began at dawn.

Yuddha Kanda, 22.52

For five days the army worked without rest — some uprooting mountains, some hurling boulders the length of the shore, some binding wood with vines — while Nala walked the line laying each stone so it would not sink, for whatever he set upon the water, tradition says, the sea itself agreed to bear.

Yuddha Kanda, 22.68

A hundred yojanas of causeway rose across the strait in five days, wide enough for the army to cross in ranks. Rama named it Nala Setu, and crossed at the army's head — the bridge that gives the strait between India and Sri Lanka its name to this day, Rama Setu.