The city in the epic
Laṅkā is described more fully than any other place in the poem, because Hanumān walks through it at night in the fifth book. It stands on the mountain Trikūṭa, is walled and moated, and is a city of gold: terraces, seven-storey mansions, gardens, tanks, music at night, gates with machines on them, and a garrison. The poem lingers on it, and the effect is deliberate — it is far grander than Ayodhyā, and the reader is not allowed to think of the enemy as living in a pit.
It was built by the architect of the gods and given to Kubera; Rāvaṇa took it from his half-brother by threat. Hanumān burns it; the army besieges and takes it; and Vibhīṣaṇa is left ruling it.
Sri Lanka and the question of identification
Tradition identifies Laṅkā with Sri Lanka, and the identification is very old, but it is not stated in the epic in terms that settle anything. What the poem gives is an island across a hundred yojanas of sea to the south, and its geography south of the Vindhyas is generally schematic.
The question has a long scholarly history. Some have argued for a location in central India, on the ground that the epic's route and distances do not obviously reach the peninsula's tip; others have proposed islands elsewhere. The conventional identification remains the strongest, and the Rāmeśvaram–Mannar shoals give it a physical anchor.
In Sri Lanka itself the epic occupies an ambiguous position. Sinhala tradition is Buddhist and has its own foundation narratives; Rāvaṇa has nonetheless been claimed in modern Sri Lankan discourse as an ancient king of the island, and a set of Rāmāyaṇa sites — including a place identified as the aśoka grove — is maintained for pilgrims, largely for Indian visitors.
The night city
Laṅkā is the most fully described place in the epic because Hanumān walks through it alone at night and the poem follows him. The account runs to chapters: the wall and the moat, the gates and their machines, the seven-storey houses, the terraces, the gold, the sound of music and of recitation, sleeping women, the palace, Rāvaṇa's own chamber, the Puṣpaka standing in it.
The effect is deliberate and it is not admiration for its own sake. The reader is being shown, in detail, a great civilization a few days before it is destroyed, and the destruction is not presented as a cleansing.
Trikūṭa
The city stands on a mountain called Trikūṭa, three-peaked, and is approached by climbing. That detail has done a good deal of work in the identification debate, since it fits some sites better than others, and it is one of the few pieces of topography the epic gives for its southern places.
The identification
Sri Lanka is the traditional identification and the strongest one, supported by the direction, by the sea crossing, by the shoals at Rāmeśvaram and by two millennia of consensus. It is not, however, stated by the poem in terms that settle it, and alternatives have been proposed — most persistently a central Indian location, on the argument that the epic's distances and route do not obviously reach the peninsula's tip.
In Sri Lanka the epic sits awkwardly with a Sinhala Buddhist historiography that has its own foundation narrative in the Mahāvaṃsa. Rāvaṇa has nonetheless been taken up in modern Sri Lankan discourse as an indigenous king, and a circuit of Rāmāyaṇa sites — Sita Eliya, Ravana Falls and others — is maintained, largely for Indian pilgrims.
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.
- Vibhīṣaṇa — Vibhīṣaṇa is Rāvaṇa's youngest brother in the Rāmāyaṇa, who told him in open council to return Sītā, was repudiated for it, defected to Rāma, and was crowned king of Laṅkā before the war began.
- The aśoka grove — The aśoka grove is the garden in Laṅkā where Sītā was held for a year in the Rāmāyaṇa, guarded by rākṣasīs, refusing Rāvaṇa, and where Hanumān found her.
- Sundara Kāṇḍa — The Sundara Kāṇḍa is the fifth book of the Rāmāyaṇa, in which Hanumān leaps the ocean, finds Sītā alive in the aśoka grove of Laṅkā and burns the city — the one book recited on its own as a devotional text in households that know little of the rest.
- Yuddha Kāṇḍa — The Yuddha Kāṇḍa is the sixth and longest book of the Rāmāyaṇa, covering the bridging of the sea, the siege of Laṅkā, the deaths of Kumbhakarṇa, Indrajit and Rāvaṇa, Sītā's ordeal by fire and the return to Ayodhyā.
- The burning of Laṅkā — The burning of Laṅkā in the Rāmāyaṇa is Hanumān's exit from the city — allowing himself to be captured, having his tail set alight as a punishment, and carrying the fire across the roofs.
- Rāma Setu — Rāma Setu is the causeway built across the sea to Laṅkā in the Rāmāyaṇa, identified in tradition with the chain of shoals between Rāmeśvaram and Mannar.
- Hanumān — Hanumān is the vānara minister of Sugrīva in the Rāmāyaṇa who leaps the ocean to find Sītā in Laṅkā and burns the city, and who became in later devotion the model of service and one of the most widely worshipped deities in India.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.