In the story
Alakā belongs to the seventh book's account of Rāvaṇa's rise. Kubera, son of the sage Viśravas by a different mother, had been established at Laṅkā by Brahmā and given the flying chariot Puṣpaka. When his half-brother's power grew and the threat became explicit, Kubera was advised by their father to give way rather than fight, and withdrew north to Alakā on Kailāsa, leaving Laṅkā and the Puṣpaka behind.
Rāvaṇa later attacked him there as well, defeated him, and it was in the course of that campaign that he attempted to lift Mount Kailāsa and was pinned under it by Śiva.
The city in later literature
Alakā's afterlife is chiefly literary. It is the destination of the cloud in Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, and the description of the city at the end of that poem — a place of perpetual spring, wealth and love, where nobody grows old — is one of the most admired passages in Sanskrit. It has fixed Alakā in the Indian imagination as the type of the ideal city, in the way that Laṅkā is the type of the doomed one.
Both cities belonged to the same family, and both were built by wealth. The epic's arrangement of the two is deliberate.
The dispossession
Kubera's loss of Laṅkā is told as a family matter and settled without a battle. Rāvaṇa's power has grown; the threat is made; and their father Viśravas advises Kubera to give way rather than fight a brother. He goes north, and takes nothing with him — the city and the Puṣpaka both stay.
The epic returns to it later: Rāvaṇa attacks Alakā as well, defeats his brother, and in the course of that campaign attempts to lift Mount Kailāsa and is pinned under it. The seventh book's picture of him is of a man who cannot leave a rival alone even after winning.
Two cities of one family
The epic sets Alakā and Laṅkā against each other deliberately. Both were built by the architect of the gods; both belong to sons of the same father; both are cities of enormous wealth. One is given up without a fight and endures; the other is taken by force and burns.
In Sanskrit poetry
Alakā's later life is literary. Kālidāsa's Meghadūta sends a cloud to it, and the description of the city in the poem's second half — perpetual spring, no age, no grief, wealth and love without limit — became the standard Sanskrit image of the ideal city. Where Laṅkā stands for magnificence about to fall, Alakā stands for magnificence that does not.
Further reading
- Bakker, Hans. Ayodhya. Egbert Forsten, 1986
- Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954
- Bose, Mandakranta. The Ramayana Revisited. Oxford University Press, 2004
- Goldman, Robert P. The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Princeton University Press, 1984
- Thapar, Romila. Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. Penguin, 2002
See also
- Rāvaṇa — Rāvaṇa is the ten-headed rākṣasa king of Laṅkā in the Rāmāyaṇa, a brahmin's son, a scholar and an ascetic protected by a boon against every being except man, who carries off Sītā and is destroyed for it.
- Laṅkā — Laṅkā is Rāvaṇa's island city in the Rāmāyaṇa, taken from his half-brother Kubera, burned by Hanumān and besieged by Rāma — traditionally identified with Sri Lanka, though the epic does not settle the question.
- Viśravas — Viśravas is the brahmin sage of the Rāmāyaṇa's seventh book who fathered both Kubera, the lord of wealth, and Rāvaṇa — making the epic's antagonist a sage's son and Kubera's half-brother.
- The Puṣpaka vimāna — The Puṣpaka is the flying chariot of the Rāmāyaṇa, made for Kubera and seized by Rāvaṇa, which carried Sītā to Laṅkā and Rāma home again — and which moves at its owner's will.
- Uttara Kāṇḍa — The Uttara Kāṇḍa is the seventh book of the Rāmāyaṇa, covering Rāvaṇa's ancestry, the banishment of the pregnant Sītā, the birth of Lava and Kuśa and Sītā's return into the earth — generally held with the first book to be a later addition.
- Kaikasī — Kaikasī is the rākṣasī mother of Rāvaṇa, Kumbhakarṇa, Śūrpaṇakhā and Vibhīṣaṇa in the Rāmāyaṇa's seventh book, sent by her father to a sage at an inauspicious hour and told what kind of children would follow.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.