Rama vs Ravana

Seventh avatar of Vishnu and hero of the Ramayana epic. Ideal man, son, husband, and king. His life demonstrates perfect adherence to dharma (duty).

Born as prince of Ayodhya. Exiled for 14 years, during which his wife Sita was kidnapped by Ravana. With the help of Hanuman, he defeated Ravana and returned to rule as ideal king.

Rama is the seventh avatar of **Vishnu** and the hero of the **Ramayana** epic. Known as *Maryada Purushottama* ("the perfect man who follows dharma"), he embodies the ideals of virtue, duty, honor, and righteous conduct.

The ten-headed rakshasa king of Lanka and principal antagonist of the Ramayana. A grandson of the sage Pulastya and devout worshipper of Shiva who won great boons through austerity, Ravana's abduction of Sita brings about his own destruction at the hands of Rama.

Ravana was born to the sage Vishrava and the rakshasi princess Kaikesi, making him a grandson of the sage Pulastya. Through fierce austerities he won from Brahma a boon of near-invulnerability, which he used to conquer the three worlds before his abduction of Sita brought Rama's forces against him and led to his death.

Ravana, in Valmiki's *Ramayana*, is the ten-headed, twenty-armed king of Lanka, born to the sage Vishrava and the rakshasi Kaikesi. Through his father, he is a grandson of Pulastya, one of the mind-born sons of Brahma, giving him a partly divine lineage despite his rakshasa nature. Through prolonged, severe austerities directed at Brahma, Ravana won a boon of near-invulnerability against gods, demons, and spirits, but, in his pride, did not think to ask for protection against humans or animals, a omission that becomes his fatal weakness.