Ramayana Film World

Ramayana characters, and how they actually connect

Most retellings stop at five or six names. The epic runs to dozens, and the ones people skip are usually the ones holding the plot together.

There is a habit in how the Ramayana gets retold. Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Hanuman, Ravana, and then everyone else becomes background. But the epic does not work that way. Its turning points are almost always handed to minor characters, and if you strip them out the story stops making sense.

A servant starts the exile. A widowed sister starts the war. A bear king has to remind the strongest character in the epic what he is capable of. None of those three are on anybody's poster.

The house of Ayodhya

Dasharatha has three queens and, for a long time, no sons. After a sacrifice he gets four. Rama is born to Kausalya, Bharata to Kaikeyi, and the twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna to Sumitra.

The brothers pair off early and stay paired. Lakshmana attaches himself to Rama and follows him into exile without being asked. Shatrughna stays with Bharata through the fourteen years in a city that is effectively in mourning.

Rama

Eldest son of Dasharatha and Kausalya

Everything in the epic turns on his decisions rather than his powers, which is the part later devotional retellings tend to lose. He is told to leave and leaves. He is told his wife is gone and grieves like a man rather than a god. Valmiki writes him as exceptional, not invulnerable.

Lakshmana

Son of Sumitra, brother of Shatrughna

Goes into exile by choice, not by order. In several retellings he stays awake for the whole fourteen years so he can guard Rama and Sita, and it is his hand that kills Indrajit, the only warrior in the epic who defeats both brothers in open battle.

Bharata

Son of Kaikeyi

Handed a throne he never wanted by a mother he then refuses to forgive. He goes to the forest to beg Rama to come back, is turned down, and returns with Rama's sandals, which he places on the seat instead of sitting on it himself. He rules as regent from outside the city for the full term.

Dasharatha

King of Ayodhya, father of the four

Bound by a promise he made years earlier to a wife who had saved his life in battle. When she calls it in, he has no way out. He dies of grief within days of Rama leaving, which is the moment the second kanda turns from politics into something else entirely.

The four sisters of Mithila

Janaka has two daughters and his brother has two more, and all four marry the four brothers of Ayodhya in a single ceremony. Only one of those four marriages gets any attention afterwards.

Sita

Daughter of Janaka, wife of Rama

Found in a furrow rather than born, raised in Mithila, and the reason the entire second half of the epic happens. The Valmiki version of her is considerably tougher than the one that filtered down through the devotional tradition. She argues with Rama, refuses his instructions outright when she disagrees, and her story ends with a refusal rather than a reconciliation.

Urmila

Sister of Sita, wife of Lakshmana

Stays behind in Ayodhya for fourteen years while her husband guards someone else's marriage. The text says almost nothing about it, which is precisely why later poets kept returning to her. If you want a sense of how much the epic leaves out, Urmila is the place to look.

Mandavi and Shrutakirti

Wives of Bharata and Shatrughna

Daughters of Kushadhwaja, Janaka's brother. They spend the exile years in a court where the king is dead, the heir is in the forest, and their husbands are running a kingdom from a village outside the walls.

The royal house of Lanka

The epic never writes Lanka as simply evil, and that is the thing most adaptations flatten. Ravana is a scholar, a musician and a devotee of Shiva before he is a villain. His court argues with him. His own brother walks out. His wife tells him he is wrong, repeatedly, and he keeps listening even though he never changes course.

A war epic in which the losing side is given better arguments than the winning one is doing something unusual.

Ravana

King of Lanka, son of Vishrava and Kaikasi

Ten heads, a doctorate's worth of learning, and one blind spot. His downfall in the text is not wickedness so much as an inability to be told no, by anyone, ever.

Vibhishana

Younger brother of Ravana

Tells his brother to return Sita, is thrown out of Lanka for it, and crosses to Rama's side. He is crowned king at the end. Whether he is a traitor or the only honest man in the room is a question the epic leaves open on purpose.

Kumbhakarna

Brother of Ravana

Woken from a long sleep to fight a war he tells Ravana outright is wrong, and then fights it anyway because his brother asked. One of the most quietly tragic figures in the whole story.

Indrajit

Eldest son of Ravana and Mandodari

The single most dangerous warrior in the epic. He defeats Rama and Lakshmana in battle and has to be killed by trickery and persistence rather than in fair combat.

Mandodari

Queen of Lanka, wife of Ravana

Argues with her husband more often than anyone else and is still in the room afterwards. Her lament over Ravana's body is one of the great passages of the Yuddha Kanda.

Surpanakha

Sister of Ravana

Her scene in the forest is short and it starts the war. What most retellings leave out is that her husband Vidyutjihva had already been killed by Ravana himself, which changes the colour of everything she does afterwards.

The allies in the forest

Rama arrives in the south with a brother and no army. What he leaves with is a kingdom's worth of allies, and every one of them is acquired through an alliance rather than a conquest.

Hanuman

Minister to Sugriva, devotee of Rama

Crosses the ocean, finds Sita, and burns Lanka on his way out. The fifth kanda is built almost entirely around him, which tells you what the text thinks of his importance.

Sugriva

King of Kishkindha, brother of Vali

Exiled by his own brother, restored by Rama, and then — in a detail most retellings quietly drop — he forgets his promise and has to be reminded, angrily, that a war is waiting. He is not a noble ally. He is a flawed one, and the story is better for it.

Jambavan

The bear king

Does almost nothing in the war and is indispensable anyway, because when the search party reaches the ocean and stops, it is Jambavan who reminds Hanuman what he can actually do. Without that speech there is no leap and no Sundara Kanda.

Jatayu

Vulture king, brother of Sampati

An old bird who takes on Ravana alone, loses, and survives just long enough to say which direction they went. He has perhaps twenty verses and they are among the most quoted in the epic.

The small parts that decide everything

These are the ones worth arguing about. None of them are protagonists and the plot does not move without them.

Manthara

A maidservant who has one idea and changes the course of the epic with it. She persuades Kaikeyi to call in her two boons, and everything after follows from that conversation.

Mareech

Takes the form of the golden deer knowing perfectly well it will kill him. He tells Ravana it is a bad plan, is overruled, and goes anyway.

Shabari

An old ascetic who offers Rama berries she has tasted first to make sure they are sweet. A tiny scene that carries more about the epic's attitude to caste and devotion than several whole chapters.

Tara

Queen of Kishkindha, and the one who talks a furious Lakshmana down from burning the place to the ground when Sugriva fails to keep his word. Her counsel is treated in the text as genuinely superior to that of the kings around her.

If you want the structure these characters move through, the epic divides into seven kandas, and knowing which book a character belongs to tells you a great deal about their function. Bharata is a second-kanda character and vanishes for most of the rest. Hanuman barely exists before the fourth.

Compiled by Ramayana Film World. Character details follow the Valmiki text; several differ in the Ramcharitmanas and in regional retellings.