Lakshmana
Indian mythology · hero · loyalty, service, vigilance
Rama's younger brother and shadow, who chose fourteen years of exile rather than be parted from him, and is said never to have slept through them. Regarded as an incarnation of the serpent Shesha.
Stories
Rama's Exile
On the eve of Rama's coronation, Manthara's whispers turn Kaikeyi's love to fear, and two old boons undo a kingdom: her son crowned, Rama banished fourteen years. Rama accepts without bitterness, Sita and Lakshmana follow him into the forest, and Dasharatha dies of grief.
The Sanjivani Mountain
Indrajit's serpent arrows leave Lakshmana dying on the field, and the healing herb grows on one Himalayan peak a night's flight away. Hanuman, unable to tell which herb is which, uproots the entire mountain and carries it back across the sky before dawn.
The Fall of Ravana
Kumbhakarna has fallen telling his brother he was wrong; Indrajit has fallen to Lakshmana. Ravana himself takes the field, and Rama, aiming at last for the heart rather than the ten heads that regrow, ends the war. Mandodari laments a husband greater than his own choice; Vibhishana lights the pyre.
Sita's Ordeal by Fire
Freed from captivity, Sita is met not with welcome but with doubt before the assembled army. She asks Lakshmana to build the pyre himself and walks into it; Agni, god of the fire that consumes everything false, lifts her out untouched and returns her to Rama as the proof she should never have owed.