I come back to the story about Jaya and Vijaya. They opted for three births as enemies of Vishnu. They were born as Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, Ravana and Kumbhakarna, and Sisupala and Dantavaktra. So Ravana was in a way looking for liberation from his birth so that he could progress to the next one and thus come closer to his Lord.
Now Ravana was a brahman by birth. If not for his lust for women and power Ravana was an eminent personality. He was a great devotee of Siva, an exponent of the Veena (which was in fact the symbol on his chariot's flag, the way Hanuman was on Arjuna's flag). Ashok Banker (who in my opinion has been seriously influenced by the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) in his Ramayana series says that the meaning of Ravana is "he who makes the universe scream". In fact I believe it is the other way round. Once Ravana tried to lift the entire Kailasa mountain with Siva and his retinue on it. Siva pressed down his toe crushing Ravana's hands under the mountain. The roar of pain that Ravana let out was supposed to have been the reason why he was named so. He was probably born as Kaikasi Brahma (I am most probably wrong about the name, if anyone knows his birth name, please tell me).
As he was a brahman Rama incurred brahmahatyaapatakam and had to perform some ceremonies to compensate for the sin. Rama is said to have worshipped Siva and hence the term Ramalingeswara. The temple at Rameswaram is the place where Rama is said to have performed his pooja.
In the next post, I shall write about a story from Ravana's life. The source is a Telugu movie. By the way, Wikipedia has a nice article on Ravana.
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