Ravana

Account

Ravana, ten-headed king of Lanka, is among the great antagonists of the Rāmāyaṇa - and among its most complex. Born to a sage's line and a rākṣasa mother, he won boons from Brahmā through ferocious penance: near-invulnerability to gods and demons that left him open, fatally, to a man. He mastered the Vedas, played the vīṇā, and was a devotee of Shiva so intense that in some tellings he offered his own heads at Kailasa. Pride and desire undid what penance had built.