Ravana

## The Rakshasa King

Ravana, in Valmiki's *Ramayana*, is the ten-headed, twenty-armed king of Lanka, born to the sage Vishrava and the rakshasi Kaikesi. Through his father, he is a grandson of Pulastya, one of the mind-born sons of Brahma, giving him a partly divine lineage despite his rakshasa nature. Through prolonged, severe austerities directed at Brahma, Ravana won a boon of near-invulnerability against gods, demons, and spirits — but, in his pride, did not think to ask for protection against humans or animals, a omission that becomes his fatal weakness.

### Conqueror of the Three Worlds

Armed with his boon, Ravana conquered the three worlds, humbled the gods, and ruled Lanka in tremendous splendor from a city said to be built of gold. He is also described in the epic as a formidable scholar, a skilled player of the veena, and a devoted worshipper of Shiva, complicating any simple reading of him as merely a monstrous villain.

### The Abduction of Sita

After his sister Shurpanakha was mutilated by Lakshmana following her advances toward Rama, Ravana resolved to avenge her by abducting Rama's wife, Sita. Using the rakshasa Maricha disguised as a golden deer to lure Rama and Lakshmana away, Ravana seized Sita and carried her to Lanka in his flying chariot, confining her in the Ashoka grove and repeatedly, unsuccessfully, pressing her to marry him.

### Defeat and Death

Rama, aided by the monkey armies of Sugriva and the devoted Hanuman, built a causeway to Lanka and waged war against Ravana's forces. Ravana's own brother Vibhishana, disapproving of the abduction, defected to Rama's side, providing counsel that helped Rama ultimately defeat Ravana in single combat. Rama killed Ravana with the Brahmastra, a decisive weapon, ending his rule and freeing Sita. In some later devotional traditions Ravana is honored as a great devotee whose death at Vishnu's avatar's hands granted him liberation (*moksha*) despite his villainy, a theological reading elaborated well after Valmiki's original text.