The ten-headed demon king of Lanka whose abduction of Sita sets the Ramayana's war in motion — a formidable scholar and devotee of Shiva as much as the epic's antagonist.
रामायण · Ramayana
A grandson of the sage Pulastya and a devoted worshipper of Shiva, Ravana ruled Lanka as a powerful and, by several accounts, capable king before his obsession with Sita, taken in retaliation for the mutilation of his sister Shurpanakha, led him to abduct her and refuse her return despite repeated warnings.
Tradition holds Ravana as extraordinarily learned, credited in some accounts with composing hymns to Shiva and treatises on statecraft, complicating his role as a purely villainous figure — a tension the epic itself does not fully resolve, and one Ram Lila performances across North India still stage each year before burning his effigy at Dussehra.