Ravana

The whole city was gold. Its ramparts and towers stood on a single peak thrust up from the southern sea, and the being who ruled it wore ten crowns at once. Ravana sat above Lanka with a court of rakshasas at his feet and a stolen flying palace moored outside his hall, and there was little in the three worlds he could not take by force. He had already taken most of it.

He was no simple monster, which is what makes him hard to be rid of. His father was the sage Vishravas and his grandfather Pulastya, one of the mind-born sons of the creator Brahma; his mother, Kaikasi, was a princess of the daityas. That mixed blood made him half brahmin and half demon, and he grew up learning the four Vedas and the whole science of war. He played the veena so well that his war banner carried its image. When people call him a demon they tend to forget that he could out-argue a priest.

His power came from an act of appalling patience. Ravana went into austerities in the wilderness and held them for ages, and when Brahma did not answer he began to cut off his own heads and lay them on the fire, one after another, as offerings. Each time a head fell a new one rose in its place, so that he could keep going. After the tenth Brahma appeared and offered him a boon. Ravana asked to be unkillable by gods, demons, spirits, serpents and beasts, every proud order of creation he could think of. In his contempt he left out men and animals, reckoning them too weak to matter. Brahma granted it, and set the seat of his life, a drop of the nectar of immortality, in the hollow of his navel.

The heads stayed. In art he is Dashanana, the ten-faced, and Dashagriva, the ten-necked, twenty arms fanning out from a body dark as a storm, each head crowned and each face carrying its own weather of moods. The ten are said to stand for the six shastras and four Vedas he had swallowed whole. He could shrink to slip through a doorway or swell until he blotted the horizon. He took Lanka and its golden fortress from his own half-brother Kubera, god of wealth, and with it the Pushpaka Vimana, a chariot-palace that flew at the speed of thought and grew or shrank to fit its load.

For all his pride he knelt to one being. Once, crossing near Mount Kailash, Ravana decided to carry the mountain home and set his twenty arms beneath it and heaved. Shiva, seated at the summit, pressed down with a single toe, and the whole weight came down and pinned him in the rock. Trapped there, arms crushed, Ravana did not curse. He sang. The hymn that came out of him in that dark, the Shiva Tandava Stotra, is still sung; some say he tore the sinews from his own arm to string an instrument and keep time. Shiva, pleased, let him out and gave him a sword. He could be crushed and still make music. That is the part of him the effigies leave out.

The war that undid him began with a slight to his family. His sister Shurpanakha, spurned and then mutilated by Rama’s brother Lakshmana in the forest, came to Lanka screaming for redress, and she made sure to describe the beauty of Rama’s wife, Sita. Ravana sent the shape-shifting demon Maricha ahead as a golden deer. Sita saw it grazing at the edge of their exile camp and wanted it, and Rama went after it, and when Lakshmana too was drawn away Ravana came down as a mild wandering ascetic begging alms. Then he showed his true size, gathered her up, and rose into the sky. The old vulture Jatayu flung himself across the chariot’s path and fought the demon king in midair until Ravana sheared off his wings and left him dying on the rocks. It cost him nothing at the time. It cost him everything later, because the broken bird lived long enough to tell Rama which way the chariot had flown.

What followed is the long second half of the epic: the alliance with the monkey people, Hanuman’s leap across the strait to find Sita in the grove where Ravana kept her, the causeway of stones flung across the sea, and the siege of Lanka itself. Ravana’s own brother Vibhishana, sickened by the whole business, walked out of the city and joined Rama. His monstrous brother Kumbhakarna, roused from a curse-long sleep for the occasion, was cut down. His son Indrajit, who had once bound the gods themselves, fell too. On the tenth day the king came out to fight in person, and Rama’s arrows took his heads only to see them grow back as fast as they dropped.

It was Vibhishana who ended it, by giving away the one secret that mattered. He told Rama to forget the heads and aim for the navel, where the nectar sat. Rama fitted the arrow of Brahma to his bow and loosed it, and it pierced the hollow and drank the nectar dry and returned to his quiver, and the ten-headed king came down like a falling tower. Ten heads counted for nothing in the end.

His strengths were exactly what killed him. The mountain-lifting strength, the mastery of illusion, the near-perfect boon, the learning that let him rule and the arrogance that let him rule cruelly, all of it rested on the assumption that nothing small could reach him. He could not even force Sita once he had her, because another curse, laid by the humiliated Nalakubara, promised that his skull would split apart the moment he took an unwilling woman; so she sat untouched in his garden and waited to be rescued. Pride, an overlooked drop of nectar, and a brother who knew where it was hidden brought down the strongest being of his age. In much of India he still burns in effigy every autumn at Dussehra, and in a handful of towns he is garlanded instead, remembered as the wronged scholar-king the winners chose to call a monster.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ravana?

Ravana is the ten-headed rakshasa (demon) king of Lanka and the principal antagonist of the Hindu epic the Ramayana. He abducts Sita, the wife of the hero Rama, which triggers the war that ends the epic. He is also portrayed as a formidable scholar, a devotee of Shiva, and a master of the veena, not a mere brute.

Why does Ravana have ten heads?

Ravana’s ten heads earn him the names Dashanana (“ten-faced”) and Dashagriva (“ten-necked”) and are said to represent his mastery of the four Vedas and the six shastras. In the story of his penance, he repeatedly cut off his own heads as offerings to Brahma, and each severed head grew back, letting him continue his austerities until Brahma granted his boon.

How was Ravana killed?

Ravana was killed by Rama with the arrow of Brahma, which struck him in the navel where a drop of the nectar of immortality was hidden. His brother Vibhishana, who had defected to Rama, revealed this secret, since Ravana’s Brahma-granted boon had made him invulnerable to gods and demons but left out humans. Rama, a human and an avatar of Vishnu, was therefore able to destroy him.

Why did Ravana abduct Sita?

Ravana abducted Sita partly in revenge after his sister Shurpanakha was rejected and mutilated by Rama and Lakshmana in the forest. He sent the demon Maricha disguised as a golden deer to lure the brothers away, then carried Sita off to Lanka in his flying chariot, the Pushpaka Vimana. He could not force himself on her, however, because a curse by Nalakubara meant his head would shatter if he touched an unwilling woman.

Was Ravana purely evil?

Ravana is not written as simple evil. He was a learned brahmin-descended king, a gifted musician credited with composing the Shiva Tandava Stotra, and a capable ruler of a golden kingdom, but his pride, cruelty, and the abduction of Sita mark him as the villain of the Ramayana. He is burned in effigy across much of India each year at Dussehra, while a few communities honor him instead as a wronged scholar-king.

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