Picture: Mandodari stopping Ravana

Written by London swaminathan

Date: 28 FEBRUARY 2017

Time uploaded in London:- 21-09

Post No. 3678

Pictures are taken from various sources; thanks.

contact; swami_48@yahoo.com

Mandodari was daughter of Demon king Maya and wife of Ranvana, King of Sri Lanka. She was the mother of Indrajit and died immediately after Ravana’s death.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa gives an interesting anecdote about Mandodari:-

Mandodari told her royal husband Ravana, “If you are so intent upon having Sita as your queen, why don’t you impose on her assuming the form of her husband Rama with the help of your magical powers?”

“Fie upon you!”, explained Ravana, “Can I stoop the pleasures of the senses while I am in the holy form of Rama – a form the very thought of which fills my heart wih such unspeakable joy and blessedness that even the higest heavens appears to me worthless?”

Hindu women remember five women’s names every day to purify themselves. Mandoari was one of the five great women. This explodes the Aryan- Dravidian Racist theory. Though Mandodari was a Rakshasa’s wife, every Hindu prays to her. More over all the 18 Hindu mythologies say that the demons got these powers by worshipping to Hindu Trinity. That also explodes the Aryan Dravidian racist theories concocted by the westerners.

Ahalya, Draupadi, Sita, Tara ,Manodari   thatha

Pancha kanya smaren nithyam sarva papa vinashanam

–Prathasmaranam

(All the sins of those who think about the five great women Ahalya, Draupadi, Sita, Tara and Mandodari will be destroyed).

Manikkavasagar’s Story

Great Tamil saint Manikkavasagar mentioned Mandodari in his Tiruvasagam (Kuyil Pathu and Tiruvarthai).

A strange legend is given in the explanatory nots for the verse in the Tiruvarthai section of Tiruvasagam as follows:

Ravana’s wife Mandodari was praying to Lord Shiva. He came in the form of a Guru. He was so handsome that Mandodari forgot herself and fell for him and asked for sensual pleasures. But Lord Shiva did not want her to fall a prey to sensual pleasures and so he disappeared. Then she repented her action. But later she gave birth to baby girl and set it afloat in the sea. That baby girl reached the country of Janaka (Bihar in India) and he found her when he went to plough the land. That baby girl was Sita. In other words, Sita was Mandodari’s daughter!

Manikkavasagar said that she was blessed by Lord Shiva. Only the commentators added this strange story. Whatever may be the story, she was one of the five chaste women every Hindu remembers.

–Subham–