Explore the pantheons

Half-rakshasa son of Bhima and Hidimbi, a giant master of night-illusions. His death was a sacrifice by design: Karna was forced to spend on him the divine spear he had saved to kill Arjuna.

Ravana's son Meghanada, called Indrajit for defeating Indra himself. Fighting invisible from the clouds, he twice felled Rama and Lakshmana with serpent-arrows; only Lakshmana, exploiting the one gap in his ritual armor, could kill him.

Ravana's colossal brother, tricked by the gods into sleeping six months at a stretch. Woken for the war, he told Ravana plainly that he was wrong, then fought and died for him anyway, because he was his brother.

The demon who became the golden deer that lured Rama from the hermitage, under Ravana's death-threat, having once already survived Rama's arrow. Dying, he cried out in Rama's voice to draw Lakshmana away too.

The ten-headed rakshasa king of Lanka, antagonist of the Ramayana. Not a simple villain: a master of the Vedas, a formidable ruler, and a devout worshipper of Shiva whose boons made him nearly invincible, undone by abducting Sita.

Ravana's youngest brother, who counseled returning Sita, was kicked from the court, and defected to Rama, who crowned him king of Lanka after the war. Tradition counts him among the immortals; his name remains a byword, honored or bitter, for leaving one's own for dharma.