Ravana, Hinduism And The Indian Left

The issue of Aryan Invasion is very complex but the matter is becoming less and less crucial with time. Does it really matter now if someone was Aryan?

To some extent all later Rāmāyaṇas play on the knowledge of previous tellings: they are meta-Rāmāyaṇas. I cannot resist repeating my favorite example. In several of the later Rāmāyaṇas (such as the AdhyātmaRāmāyaṇa, sixteenth century), when Rāma is exiled, he does not want Sītā to go with him into the forest. Sītā argues with him. At first she uses the usual arguments: she is his wife, she should share his sufferings, exile herself in his exile and so on. When he still resists the idea, she is furious. She bursts out, ‘Countless Rāmāyaṇas have been composed before this. Do you know of one where Sītā doesn’t go with Rāma to the forest?’ That clinches the argument, and she goes with him (AdhyātmaRāmāyaṇa 2.4.77-78; see Nath 1913, 39). And as nothing in India occurs uniquely, even this motif appears in more than one Rāmāyaṇa.