Ravanaरावण

Ravana is burned in effigy, in public, in hundreds of Indian towns, on the same day he receives worship in a handful of temples a few hundred kilometres away.

He is the Ramayana's antagonist: king of Lanka, ten-headed, twenty-armed, who carried off Sita and was killed by Rama for it. Every Dussehra, effigies of him and his brother Kumbhakarna and his son Meghnad go up in flames in front of large crowds, and the burning is one of the most widely attended public rituals in India.

And he is also, in the same tradition that burns him:

— a brahmin by lineage, grandson of the sage Pulastya, one of the Saptarishi; — a Vedic scholar of the first rank, master of the four Vedas and the six shastras, whose learning the Ramayana itself does not dispute; — a musician, credited with the rudra vina, and the author of the Shiva Tandava Stotram, one of the most formidable pieces of Sanskrit devotional verse ever composed; — the supreme devotee of Shiva, who offered his own heads into the fire one after another until the god came; — a ruler under whom, the text says, Lanka wanted for nothing.

He is also the man who abducted another man's wife, held her in a grove under guard for months, and would not return her when his own wife, his own brother and his own grandfather told him to. This page does not soften that, and it will not be dressed up as a misunderstanding.

The interesting thing about Ravana is not that he was secretly good. It is that Hinduism never simplified him. It gave its greatest villain a faultless pedigree, a first-class mind, real devotion and genuine achievement, and then had him do something indefensible — and it kept all of it, in the same book.

He is in this encyclopedia because 35 references across 14 existing pages needed somewhere to point, and because the temples where he is worshipped are real and open.

The Valmiki Ramayana is the source, and the portrait there is already double. Ravana is introduced as a scourge and is described throughout in terms of splendour, learning and strength; the text lets its heroes admire him and lets him be frightening in the same breath. Mandodari's lament over his body, and Rama's own instruction that he be cremated with full honours — maraṇāntāni vairāṇi, enmity ends with death — are in the epic, not added later.

The Uttara Kanda, the seventh book and generally held to be a later addition, supplies the back-story: the brahmin lineage from Pulastya through Vishrava; the mother Kaikasi, a rakshasi; the austerity; the boons; the conquest of Lanka from his half-brother Kubera; and the episodes that many readers find decisive — above all Vedavati, and Rambha, and the curse laid on him that he would die if he forced a woman. That curse is why Sita is held in the Ashoka grove and not in his palace, and the text is explicit about it.

Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas (16th c.) is the version most north Indians actually know, and it is a bhakti reworking: Ravana becomes, in part, a devotee who takes the adversary's role so that liberation comes through opposition — dvesha bhakti, devotion by hatred. Jaya and Vijaya, Vishnu's cursed doorkeepers, are identified with him across births.

Regional Ramayanas differ, and substantially. There are hundreds. The Jain Ramayanas — Vimalasuri's Paumachariyam and after — make Ravana a Vidyadhara nobleman and a tragic figure, deny that he was a demon at all, and have Lakshmana kill him rather than Rama. Southeast Asian versions give him more dignity again. Some Tamil and Sri Lankan traditions treat him as a legitimate king wronged by an invader.

The Dravidian and anti-caste reading. From the early twentieth century, figures in the Dravidian movement — and later some Dalit and Adivasi writers — read Ravana as a southern or indigenous king destroyed by a northern, Sanskritic invasion, and read his demonisation as the text doing politics. This reading is held sincerely and has real scholarly defenders; it is also contested, and the Ramayana's own account makes Ravana a Sanskrit-speaking brahmin-descended Shiva devotee rather than an outsider to that world. The encyclopedia records that the argument exists, is live, and is not settled, and does not adjudicate it.

In Sri Lanka, a modern body of writing and state-adjacent tourism promotion identifies Ravana as an ancient Lankan monarch with sites across the island. The historical evidence for this is thin and it is largely a recent construction; the encyclopedia says so and notes that the sites are nonetheless visited in large numbers.

Ten heads, and it is never subtle.

The heads. Ten — nine arranged around or above a central one, or stacked in tiers. Dashanan, Dashagriva: the ten-necked. Their usual reading is the six shastras and four Vedas, which makes his defining feature a statement about learning, not monstrosity; another reading makes them the passions.

Twenty arms, carrying weapons; often the Chandrahas sword.

Lifting Kailasa. The great sculptural subject and one of the finest things in Indian art: Ravana underneath the mountain, arms braced, heaving, with Shiva and Parvati seated above, Parvati alarmed and Shiva pressing down with one toe. The Ellora Kailasa temple and the Elephanta panel are the masterpieces; it is called Ravananugraha — the favour shown to Ravana — and note that the panel is named for the grace, not the punishment.

With the vina. Seated, playing, heads bent — the Ravanahatha, and the devotee-musician. Common in South Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture and almost unknown in the north.

Offering his heads. Cutting them off one by one into the fire.

The effigy. The other iconography, and the one most Indians actually see: a towering paper-and-bamboo figure with a moustache, a crown and ten faces, packed with fireworks, standing in a maidan on Dussehra evening.

In Ramlila. A masked, roaring, magnificently costumed stage villain whose entrance is the best moment of the night.

Distinguishing him. Ten heads settle it. Ravana under the mountain is Ravananugraha; Ravana with a vina is the devotee; Ravana with a woman in a chariot is the abduction, and Jatayu is usually falling out of the sky beside it.

Ravana. From the root ru — the one who makes things roar or scream; the name is given in the Uttara Kanda by Shiva after the mountain episode.

Dashanan / Dashagriva / Dashamukha. Ten-faced, ten-necked.

Lankesh / Lankeshwar / Lankapati. Lord of Lanka.

Ravanasura. The demon form of the name, used where the emphasis is on the adversary.

Ravananugraha-murti. The sculptural subject — not a form of Ravana but a form of Shiva, defined by what he does to Ravana. That is a real theological point: the panel is about grace to the one who was crushed.

Jaya and Vijaya. Vishnu's doorkeepers, cursed by the Kumaras to three demonic births — Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha, then Ravana and Kumbhakarna, then Shishupala and Dantavakra. The frame that makes every Vaishnava antagonist a devotee on a detour.

His family, who matter to his story: Mandodari his wife, one of the panchakanya; Kumbhakarna who slept; Vibhishana who left and has his own page here; Meghnad / Indrajit who beat Indra; Shurpanakha his sister, whose mutilation begins the war; Kubera his half-brother, whom he robbed.

Not Ravana of the Jain Ramayanas as the same character — a genuinely different figure in a different theology.

Lifting Kailasa. Denied entry, or simply impatient, Ravana put his arms under the mountain and lifted it. Shiva pressed down with one toe and pinned his hands beneath it. Ravana, crushed, did not curse or beg — he composed, and what he composed under the mountain is the Shiva Tandava Stotram, seventeen verses of hammering panchachamara metre that are still recited across India today. Shiva released him, gave him the sword Chandrahas, and gave him the name.

Whatever else is true of him, the tradition's position is unambiguous: Shiva liked him.

The ten heads. In his austerity he cut off his own heads, one after another, and offered them into the fire; at the tenth Brahma stopped him and granted the boon. He asked for invulnerability against gods, asuras, yakshas and every order of powerful being — and did not trouble to mention men or animals, which is the hinge the whole Ramayana turns on. It is the same defeated boon as Hiranyakashipu's and Mahishasura's, and the Narasimha page sets out the pattern.

Shurpanakha. His sister approaches Rama and Lakshmana in the forest, is rebuffed, and is mutilated — her nose and ears cut off. This encyclopedia states it as the text does, and states also that a great many readers, including many devout ones, find it the most troubling passage in the epic. It is what brings Ravana into the story.

The abduction. A golden deer; Rama drawn away; the line Lakshmana drew; a mendicant at the door. Ravana takes Sita by force, and Jatayu, an old vulture, tries to stop a being no god could stop, and is cut down for it, and lives long enough to tell Rama which way they went. Jatayu is the moral centre of this part of the book and is the reason it is not merely a crime.

The grove. Sita is held for months in the Ashoka vatika, under guard, refusing him. Because of the Vedavati curse he cannot touch her, and he does not; the text is clear that this is a restraint imposed on him and not a virtue he chose.

Everyone tells him to stop. Mandodari tells him. Vibhishana tells him and leaves when he will not listen. Kumbhakarna, waking, tells him he was wrong and then goes out to die for him anyway. Maricha tells him. His grandfather Pulastya is invoked against him. Ravana is not a man who did not know; he is a man who was told, repeatedly, by everyone who loved him, and did it anyway.

The war, and the end. Indrajit kills and nearly kills; Hanuman brings the mountain; the bridge is built; and in the last fight Rama's arrow finds the amrita in Ravana's navel.

And then the scene that makes the page. Rama sends Lakshmana to the dying Ravana to learn from him — statecraft, and the things a defeated enemy knows. Lakshmana goes to the head and gets nothing; Ravana tells him that a student stands at the feet. He then teaches him. And Rama orders his funeral performed with full rites, saying that enmity ends at death.

A tradition that wanted a simple villain would not have written that. This one wrote it and kept it.

He is burned, and he is worshipped, and both are current.

Ravana Dahan. On Dussehra, effigies are burned in hundreds of towns before very large crowds — the Delhi, Varanasi and Ramlila Maidan burnings among the biggest. It is the culmination of the Ramlila, and Ramlila is inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

And the temples where he is not burned. These are real, functioning and few:

— Bisrakh (Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh), which holds itself to be his birthplace, where Dussehra is a day of mourning and effigies are not burned. — Dashanan Temple, Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), inside the Kailash Mandir complex, which opens one day a year — on Dussehra — and is worshipped that day. — Mandsaur (Madhya Pradesh), held by local tradition to be Mandodari's natal place, making Ravana the town's son-in-law; a large Ravana image, and customs of respect. — Bisrakh, Baijnath (Himachal Pradesh), Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh) and a handful of others, each with its own reasoning, usually Shaiva.

The Shiva Tandava Stotram is his largest living presence by far. It is recited and sung across India, by people who in many cases do not know who wrote it, and it is one of the most popular Sanskrit hymns in circulation.

In the Ramlila and the Kathakali and Yakshagana repertoires, Ravana is the great role.

A note on the argument. Ravana is now a live political symbol — invoked in Dravidian, Dalit and Adivasi assertions of a suppressed history, and invoked against them. This encyclopedia's position is that the Ramayana is a religious text of enormous importance to a great many people, that the readings which recover Ravana as a wronged king are held sincerely and deserve to be stated rather than dismissed, that the text itself makes him a Sanskrit-speaking brahmin-descended Shiva devotee rather than an outsider, and that none of that makes the abduction of Sita anything other than what it is. Readers will disagree about him. They should disagree with the whole of him in front of them.

Bisrakh (Gautam Buddh Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh) — the claimed birthplace, near Greater Noida. An ancient Shiva temple, a Ravana shrine, and a village that mourns rather than celebrates on Dussehra.

Dashanan Temple, Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh) — in the Kailash Mandir compound, Shivala. Opens once a year, on Vijayadashami; the image is bathed, oiled and worshipped, and closed again at nightfall.

Ravana Temple, Mandsaur (Madhya Pradesh) — the Khanpura locality, a large reclining Ravana, and the son-in-law tradition.

Baijnath (Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh) — a superb 13th-century Shiva temple where, by local custom, Ravana is not burned, out of respect for his devotion.

Kakinada (Kakinada district, Andhra Pradesh) — a Ravana shrine with Shiva, on the coast.

Ellora Cave 16, the Kailasa temple (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, Maharashtra) — the Ravananugraha panel beneath the mountain; a UNESCO World Heritage Site and arguably the single most astonishing building in India.

Elephanta Caves (Mumbai, Maharashtra) — the other great Ravananugraha relief; also UNESCO.

Rameswaram (Ramanathapuram district, Tamil Nadu) — where Rama is said to have worshipped Shiva to expiate the killing of a brahmin, which is what Ravana was. A Jyotirlinga and a Char Dham site.

Koneswaram, Trincomalee, and the Ravana Ella falls and caves (Sri Lanka) — the modern Ravana circuit, visited heavily, historically thin.

And any maidan in north India on Dussehra evening.

A villain nobody simplified. This is the whole of his importance. Hinduism had every opportunity to make its most famous antagonist stupid, ugly, low-born or ignorant, and did the opposite: it made him a brahmin's grandson, a master of the Vedas, a musician, a hymn-writer whose hymn is still sung, and a devotee Shiva personally favoured — and then had him commit an abduction that the text never excuses. Both halves are canonical. The epic simply declines to resolve them for you.

Knowledge is not virtue. Ten heads for the four Vedas and six shastras: the most learned being in the story is the one who does the worst thing in it, and he is learned right up to the end, teaching statecraft to Lakshmana from the ground. Whatever else the Ramayana is arguing, it is arguing that erudition and devotion do not by themselves make a person good — which is a harder and more useful claim than the one usually drawn from it.

He was told. His wife told him, his brother told him and left, his other brother told him and died for him anyway, his ministers told him. The tragedy is not ignorance or fate; it is a man with every possible advantage, including excellent advice from people who loved him, choosing not to take it. That is a recognisable failure and it is why the character survives.

Burned and worshipped on the same afternoon. A few hundred kilometres separate a crowd cheering an effigy collapsing in flames from a priest bathing a Ravana image that is uncovered one day a year. Hinduism holds both without embarrassment, and there is no central authority to make it choose. That is not incoherence. It is what a religion looks like when it has no mechanism for deciding, and it is worth seeing clearly before anyone describes Indian tradition as monolithic.

And the funeral. Rama's order that his enemy be cremated with full honours — enmity ends with death — is one sentence in a very long book, and it is the sentence that separates the Ramayana from a story about killing a monster. The tradition could have left him on the field. It sent his brother to bury him.