Devalok
Legend · 3 tellings · Pan-India, South India, West India

Ravana lifts Kailash

Who is in it

Places: Mount Kailash, Elephanta Caves · Texts: Valmiki Ramayana, Tevaram

The story, beat by beat

  1. Flying home in the Pushpaka after beating Kubera, Ravana is halted by Kailash.
  2. He mocks Nandi, who curses him to be destroyed by monkeys.
  3. Ravana sets his twenty arms under the mountain and lifts it; Parvati clings to Shiva.
  4. Shiva presses the peak back down with one toe and Ravana is trapped beneath it.
  5. For a thousand years he sings hymns to Shiva.
  6. Shiva frees him and grants a sword and, in the temple sequel, his own linga.

pride devotion music toe

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Ramayana, Uttara Kanda

Pan-India Shaiva

Ravana had beaten his half-brother Kubera and taken the flying palace Pushpaka, and he was riding it home when it stopped in the air over a mountain it could not cross. The bull-headed guardian at the pass told him this was Kailash, where Shiva was with his queen, and that no one flew over it. Ravana laughed at the monkey-faced creature, and Nandi answered that monkeys would one day be his ruin. Then the demon got down, set all twenty of his arms under the mountain and heaved, and Kailash rocked. On its summit Parvati clutched her husband. Shiva put one toe down. The mountain settled, and Ravana was under it, crushed and howling. He stayed there a thousand years, and what he did with the time was sing: hymn after hymn to the god who had pinned him, until Shiva was pleased, let him out, named him Ravana for his roaring, and gave him a sword.

Ravananugraha — Wikipedia; Mount Kailash — Wikipedia

Encyclopedia

Tevaram and Tamil tradition

South India · Tamil Nadu Shaiva

The Tamil saints of the Tevaram return to the scene again and again, and in their version Ravana under the mountain makes himself an instrument, in some tellings from his own sinews, and sings the hymn to the dancing Shiva that tradition calls the Shiva Tandava Stotram; it is the music that moves the god.

What is different here:

The veena and the Tandava hymn; Ravana as musician-devotee.

Ravananugraha — Wikipedia

Temple tradition

Ellora, Elephanta, Halebidu reliefs

West India · Ellora and Elephanta (Maharashtra), Halebidu (Karnataka) Shaiva

Sculptors loved the scene: the Kailasa temple at Ellora has a whole panel of the many-armed demon straining under the mountain while the divine pair sit unmoved above, and Elephanta and the Hoysaleswara at Halebidu carve it too.

What is different here:

Iconographic record known as Ravananugraha, Shiva's grace to Ravana.

Ravananugraha — Wikipedia; Elephanta Caves — Wikipedia

Sources: Ravananugraha — Wikipedia; Mount Kailash — Wikipedia; Elephanta Caves — Wikipedia

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