The third axis of brothers and rightful kings is explored in the story of Rāvaṇa and Vibhīṣaṇa. Rāvaṇa is the king of Lankā because he is older than Vibhīṣaṇa and because of his superior prowess. But Rāvaṇa is governed by his addiction to sensual pleasures and by the arrogance he derives from his boon of invulnerability. His abduction of Sītā and his refusal to return her to Rāma makes him unrighteous and impels Vibhīṣaṇa to leave his brother and join forces with Rāma. Rāvaṇa’s abduction of Sītā also symbolizes his usurpation of Rāma’s position as lord of the worlds and it is for this that he must be punished. At one point in the battle, when Vibhīṣaṇa thinks Rāma might be dead, he is terribly upset because his only chance of securing the rākṣasa kingdom seems to have vanished. Thus, Vibhīṣaṇa’s motives for deserting his brother have as much to do with his desire for the kingdom as with his desire to fight on the side of the right and the good. As a reward for Vibhīṣaṇa’s loyalty to dharma, Rāma confers the rākṣasa kingdom on him after Rāvaṇa is killed in battle.
Among the three sets of brothers and their three different relationships to one another and to dharma, it is Rāma and Bharata who clearly display the ideal relationship. The other two sets of brothers represent variations on this ideal.
Here again the relations we encounter are not expressed by the logic of simple binary oppositions but through a technique of strategic exaggeration and distortion. I can only express it analogically by saying that human relations are mirrored and echoed in the worlds of animals and demons, but the mirrors are the kind that not only invert but also exaggerate and distort.’***
Women in the Rāmāyaṇa
Just as the monkey brothers, Vālī and Sugrīva, play out an alternate option to the problem of disputed kingship, so, too, does the rākṣasī Śūrpanakhā, Rāvaṇa’s sister, provide a distorted mirror image of the chaste and virtuous Sītā.
Sītā and Śūrpanakhā exemplify two types of women who appear almost universally in folklore and mythology: Sītā is good, pure, light, auspicious and subordinate, whereas Śūrpanakhā is evil, impure, dark, inauspicious and insubordinate. Although male characters also divide into good and bad, the split between women is far more pronounced and is always expressed in terms of sexuality.†††
Śūrpanakhā comes upon Sītā, Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in the forest. Rāma has just fought off the rākṣasa Virādha who had grabbed Sītā, a foreshadowing of the more serious abduction that will take place a little later. Śūrpanakhā desires Rāma for his good looks and suggests that he give up his ugly human female for her. The brothers proceed to tease and torment Śūrpanakhā, eventually cutting off her nose and ears, Śūrpanakhā’s mutilation in the forest echoes the battle the princes had with Tāṭakā in which Rāma was reluctant to kill a woman until Viśvāmitra assured him it was all right. The assault on Śūrpanakhā also moves the story into top gear—she complains to her brother Rāvaṇa, at which point he decides to abduct Sītā in order to avenge the insult to his sister.
Both Katherine Erndl and Sally Sutherland‡‡‡ demonstrate that the major opposition between Sītā and Śūrpanakhā is in terms of sexuality. Sītā’s is a domesticated, conjugal love while Śūrpanakhā represents untamed, aggressive and, therefore, potentially threatening desire. Sutherland suggests that the encounter between Sītā and Śūrpanakhā carries the potential of their becoming co-wives and therefore, they are set up as rivals for the same man’s affections. She also interprets the mutilation of the rākṣasī as necessary to curb her dangerous sexuality because Rāma cannot make the same mistake as his father: he cannot be ensnared by a woman’s charms. The Rāmāyaṇa implicitly argues that it is not wrong for Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa to assault and disfigure Śūrpanakhā, just as it was not wrong for them to have killed Tāṭakā the yakṣinī, because they are in the forest where different rules apply and because Rāma cannot afford to commit the same mistakes as his father.
The same sexual opposition between rival wives is played out between Kausalyā and Kaikeyī, the mothers of Rāma and Bharata.§§§ While Kausalyā is the respected senior wife of Daśaratha, it is clearly Kaikeyī, the junior wife, who has the king enthralled by her beauty and charm. Kausalyā does everything right, including producing the perfect son, but she has little hold on the king’s affections even though she is the ideal wife and mother. Kaikeyī, on the other hand, is wilful and stubborn and gets her way all the time. She conspires to obtain the kingdom for her son and earns the contempt of everyone, including Bharata.
Similarly, good and righteous wives recur in the multiple stories of kingship. Vālī, the monkey king, has a virtuous and wise wife named Tārā who first urges him not to destroy Sugrīva and then cautions him against fighting Rāma. Vālī does not heed her words and goes out to meet his fate. When Vālī dies, Sugrīva inherits Tārā along with the kingdom. As his senior wife, she remains the voice of righteousness and sanity in his court and Rūmā, Sugrīva’s other wife, becomes the focus of his sexual attentions. The parallels with the Kausalyā-Kaikeyī situation are very clear: Kausalyā and Tārā are the wise, older wives who have the king’s attention because of their virtues and Kaikeyī and Rūmā are the younger wives whose sexual charms have a hold on the king. Similarly, Rāvaṇa’s chief queen, Mandodarī, tries her best to dissuade him from taking on the might of Rāma because she knows that Rāvaṇa is acting wrongly, but to no avail. While he holds Mandodarī in great respect, Rāvaṇa satisfies his sensual and sexual desires with the thousands of other women that fill his palace.
Along with dangerous, demonic women, female ascetics (like Svyamprabhā ) and the virtuous wives of sages (like Ahalyā and Anusūyā) also live in the forests. Their rigorous austerities have given them magical powers and a high spiritual status. But once again (as with Sītā), because their sexuality has been sublimated, they pose no threat to anyone. In Lankā, the good rākṣasīs Saramā and Trijaṭā, both of whom help Sītā during her imprisonment, mirror the female ascetics of the forest. The female ascetics and the good rākṣasīs are safe havens in the regions where dangerous, demonic women abound.
These variations on particular themes in the Rāmāyaṇa are expressed through replication, shadowing and mirror images. Within the text, they explore multiple possibilities in terms of relationships, characters and story lines. The tight normative roles prescribed for Rāma, Bharata, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa are, in fact, heightened by the more realistic paths taken by the non-human and liminal characters in the text. Apart from presenting a contrast between the prescriptive behaviour of the human characters and the morally ambiguous actions of their non-human shadows, replications also serve to generate the narrative trope of foreshadowing. As in the case when Virādha snatches Sītā away, events, emotions and even behaviours are hinted at and suggested in smaller incidents and side tales well before the critical moment occurs. Foreshadowing acts as a powerful tool in the building and maintenance of a mood for the epic. It also provides a narrative rhythm as it lays out the primary concern of the text.
The Magical Beings of the Rāmāyaṇa
Traditional Indian literatures are filled with magical beings, some benign, others malevolent. While the benign beings (for example, the siddhas and cāraṇas) are very like each other, the malevolent ones are usually more ambivalent and, therefore, more interesting. Malevolent and dangerous beings occur in a hierarchy which places asuras, daityas and dānavas at the very top and piśācas and yatudhānas at the very bottom. Rākṣasas, yakṣas, nāgas and the like fall in between these two. The closer the beings are to the top of the hierarchy, the more they resemble the gods and, therefore, the more ambivalent they are likely to be.
Asuras, dānavas and daityas are ‘not good’ rather than being wicked or bad. They are classified as wicked mainly because they tend to oppose the gods. The asuras, especially, are defined only in opposition to the gods and spend much of their time and energy trying to conquer the kingd
om of the gods and rulership of the worlds.¶¶¶ Daityas and dānavas, on the other hand, the sons of Diti and Danu respectively, are divine and are rivals of the gods.****
As we progress lower in the hierarchy, the wicked creatures become less ambiguously so. Most generally, rākṣasas appear in Indian stories as horrendous, vile, flesh-eating creatures. Prone to disrupting sacrifices and, therefore, to disrupting the universal order which is maintained by the careful performance of complex rituals, they are most powerful at night.
The rākṣasas of the Rāmāyaṇa are unlike any others in the vast corpus of Indian literatures. Rāvaṇa and most of his followers do not fit the general description of these creatures at all. On the contrary, they are magnificent and regal. Hanumān notices that Lankā even has rākṣasas who are virtuous about performing Vedic rituals. Rāvaṇa and his siblings are the children of the mighty sage Pulastya, who is a son of Brahmā. Rāvaṇa himself is so handsome and majestic that when Hanumān sees him for the first time, he is awed by his beauty and power and moved to remark that had Rāvaṇa not been so unrighteous, he was worthy of ruling over even the gods. Even though Rāvaṇa has ten heads, twenty arms and blazing red eyes, he clearly possesses compelling charisma. The women in his palace, each of them incomparably beautiful, have come to him of their own accord out of love. Rāvaṇa’s chief queen is so beautiful that Hanumān thinks she might even be Sītā. Rāvaṇa’s brother, Vibhīṣaṇa, is righteous and honourable like his grandfather Mālyavān. Rāvaṇa’s sons are all excellent warriors and, except for Indrajit, fight ethically and honourably. There are also good and virtuous rākṣasīs like Mandodarī, Trijaṭā and Saramā.
At the same time, Rāvaṇa’s sister Śūrpanakhā, whose lust for Rāma moves the story towards its climax, is ugly and crude. Likewise, Kumbhakarṇa, Rāvaṇa’s gigantic brother, is terrifying and malformed. These two are more like rākṣasas are supposed to be—appetitive, gross and undesirable in every way. The lesser rākṣasas, like the ones who serve Rāvaṇa and the rākṣasīs who serve Sītā, fit the common description of rākṣasas far more closely. Almost without exception, they are greedy, ugly and deformed and eager to eat human flesh.
One of the defining features of the Rāmāyaṇa’s rākṣasas is that they are kāmarūpī, i.e., they can change their forms at will. This is amply borne out by Mārīca, who takes on the form of a jewelled deer to lure Rāma away from his forest settlement. During the war, Rāvaṇa’s spies infiltrate Rāma’s army by taking on the form of monkeys.
The counterparts of the rākṣasas are the monkeys of Kiṣkindha, who come to Rāma’s aid and fight on his side during the war. Equally magical, they, too, can change their shapes at will, as Hanumān does when he searches for Sītā in Lankā. Like Rāvaṇa and his family, each of the important monkeys has a divine father. Even the lesser monkeys were fathered by celestial beings. In this lies the secret of all their magical powers.
The magical animals of the forest, Sugrīva and his monkeys, Hanumān, Jaṭāyu and Sampāti, have often been likened to the animals that appear in folk and fairy tales. They share the same characteristics of being able to speak human language as well as being able to do uncanny things. Hanumān’s character and actions fit the mode of the animal helper in fairy tales who aids the hero in his enterprise, without whom, in fact, the enterprise could not succeed.
The rākṣasas and the monkeys are essential to the story that has to be told. Rāma needs an opponent worthy of himself, someone who will challenge him to the fullest and yet be unrighteous enough to warrant the harshest treatment. Just as Rāma has to be human in order to kill Rāvaṇa, so Rāvaṇa has to be exceedingly powerful in order to be a threat to the worlds. Thus, his semi-divine parentage and his enormous powers are crucial aspects of his position as the rival to the hero.
The narrative reason also applies to the fact that Rāma’s allies are monkeys. Rāvaṇa’s boon granted him immunity from all kinds of celestial and demonic beings, but in his self-assurance, he neglected to ask for invulnerability from mortals and the lower creatures. Thus, Rāma (or Viṣṇu) appears as a mortal aided by monkeys in order to vanquish Rāvaṇa. Over and above this, we have already discussed the possibility that these creatures function as shadows, counterparts and alternates for the human characters who are restricted by their mortality as well as by their morality from behaving in certain ways.
A great deal of Rāmāyaṇa scholarship has turned its attention to extranarrative explanations of who the monkeys and the rākṣasas really are. Several scholars have suggested that the monkeys and rākṣasas represent the non-Aryan tribes of India and that the defeat of the rākṣasas is, in fact, the story of Aryan expansion into India. This hypothesis, particularly the idea that the monkeys of the Rāmāyaṇa are the indigenous tribal peoples of the subcontinent, has had many supporters. Apart from the unpleasant racial overtones that such a notion elicits, the theory diminishes the power of the poetic imagination by insisting that meaning arises only from a reduction to mundane and identifiable reality.
Other scholars have suggested that the rākṣasas represent the ‘other’ of Hindu society upon which all its fears and terrors can be located.†††† This hypothesis, that the rākṣasas represent the innermost terrors of Hindu culture, is far more interesting because it attempts to analyse these creatures from within the mind of their creator(s). Besides that, it opens up yet another dimension, another aspect to the text, further enriching it for its audience.
Rāma’s Divinity
The Indian Rāma stories that come after Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa all take Rāma’s divinity as a starting point for their tale. However, in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa, it is clear that for most of the story Rāma does not know that he is divine. It is precisely this fact that gives his trials and tribulations such poignancy—Rāma does not know why all these awful things are happening to him and why he has to suffer so much. It is at the very end of the war with the rākṣasas, after Rāvaṇa has been killed and Sītā has proved her chastity, that the gods appear and tell Rāma that he is Viṣṇu and not an ordinary mortal.
Scholars unanimously hold that the first and last books of Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa (‘Childhood’ and ‘Epilogue’) are later additions to the central five books.‡‡‡‡ In Vālmīki’s text as it is constituted today, the only places where Rāma’s divinity is unambiguously stated are the closing chapters of the sixth book (‘War’) and in the first and last books. In the first book, Daśaratha performs a sacrifice for the birth of a son. At the same time, the gods, who are being harassed by Rāvaṇa, plead with Viṣṇu to be born on earth as a mortal in order to kill the rākṣasa. A celestial being appears at Daśaratha’s sacrifice with heavenly food that will cause the queens to become pregnant. Rāma and his brothers are born as a result of this. In the last book, Viṣṇu is recalled to heaven by Brahmā and so Rāma has to give up his earthly life. When Brahmā’s messenger arrives, Rāma knows what is required of him and makes arrangements to leave his kingdom and ascend to heaven.
In the middle books, then, the only direct mention of Rāma’s divinity is after the war. Nonetheless, arguing from within the narrative necessities of the text, Sheldon Pollock states firmly that Rāma has to be a god-man.§§§§ Pollock holds that Rāma’s divinity is a ‘higher order narrative feature,’ i.e., that it is constitutive of the text itself. His argument is as follows: since Rāvaṇa had been made invulnerable to all kinds of creatures by his boon, the only kind of being that could kill him could be a mortal. But since he is so powerful and magnificent an enemy, this mortal could not be ordinary. Therefore, a god-man is the only possibility, a man who has the powers of the gods without actually being one himself.
The gods may never in such circumstances actually grant immortality itself. . . . Yet like so many others Rāvaṇa seeks to achieve the same result by a gambit widely familiar in folklore, by attempting to frame the perfect wish. The sheer impossibilit
y of an exhaustive catalogue, however (in this case over-determined by Rāvaṇa’s scornfully discounting man altogether), immediately implies that a solution is assured; the very provisions of the boon make it inevitable that some proxy will be found. Not a god, since the gods have become, so to speak, contractually impotent; nor yet a man, men being constitutionally impotent. . . . Instead, it must be some fusion of the two, a god-man.¶¶¶¶
Despite these hypotheses and all the other extratextual reasons for Rāma being considered divine (like the suggestion that the Indian conception of kingship demanded that the king be divine), within the story Rāma must act as a human hero even though he is Viṣṇu. How else would the tale find its dramatic tension, its pathos, its tragedy? And perhaps most important, how could Rāma be seen as the ideal man, a model for human behaviour and a paragon of virtue?
Imagine if the story had, from the outset, two equally matched protagonists, Rāma and Rāvaṇa. Imagine if Rāma had known that his banishment served a larger and far more significant purpose than the petty ambitions of his step-mother. Imagine if he had known all along that the monkeys would help him rescue Sītā and that the throne of Kosalā would be restored to him. As it is, Rāma displays an almost unnatural equanimity in the face of all that happens to him. But because he functions as a human hero, he has his moments of torment. He regrets the fact that he was exiled because of his father’s infatuation with a selfish and flighty woman. He is insane with grief when Sītā is abducted and vows to show the gods the extent of his wrath if she is not returned to him unharmed. He is pathetic and miserable without her and turns his anger on Sugrīva, who seems to have forgotten the terms of their alliance. It is moments like these that grasp the reader’s imagination, for they make Rāma real, accessible and utterly human.
Valmiki's Ramayana Page 3