qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
Vibhishan listened to what you advised him, and he took it.
He became the lord of Lanka. There is nobody in the world who has not heard how that turned out.
Mantra here is not a syllable to be repeated. It is counsel — the sense the word carries in mantrī, a minister, and mantraṇā, taking advice. The root is man, to think, with the suffix -tra that makes an instrument of a verb: a thing you think with. The chanted formula and the advice given to a king are the same word, and both senses are ancient.
Vibhīṣaṇa is Rāvaṇa's younger brother. He argues in his brother's court that Sītā must be returned, and is thrown out of the family and the kingdom for saying so. In Tulsīdās's Rāmcaritmānas, when Hanumān is in Laṅkā searching, he comes to Vibhīṣaṇa's house and the two of them talk — Vibhīṣaṇa asking how someone living in the middle of a rākṣasa city could ever be reached by Rāma's grace. He crosses to Rāma afterwards, is received, and the crown of Laṅkā comes to him from Rāma's own hand.
Mānā is from mānnā, which in Hindi means to accept, to believe and to obey, all in the one verb, and this chaupai needs all three. Advice is not counsel because it was good. It is counsel because somebody took it.
Notice what the couplet offers as evidence: saba jaga jānā, the whole world knows. Not a scripture, not an argument — the outcome, and the fact that everyone heard about it.
Set this beside the previous chaupai and a shape appears. Two younger brothers, each estranged from an elder who held a throne; two kingdoms settled; and Hanumān standing in the middle of both, having introduced one and advised the other. Neither king is made by force, and neither is made by him — but neither happens without him.
When did someone give you advice you actually took? What made you trust them that time?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made