Mandodari- Hindu DemonDemon"Queen of Lanka"

Hanuman's Mistake

When Hanuman infiltrated Lanka searching for Sita, he entered the inner chambers of Ravana's palace and found a woman asleep whose beauty stopped him. For a moment he believed he had found Rama's wife. Then he looked again and realized this was someone else. The Sundara Kanda identifies her as Mandodari, daughter of the asura architect Mayasura and the apsara Hema, chief queen of Ravana and mother of Meghanada, the warrior who earned the name Indrajit by defeating Indra in battle.

The Warnings

After Ravana abducted Sita, Mandodari urged him to send her back. She reminded him of the omens that attended Sita's arrival in Lanka: the earth had trembled, flames guttered without wind. She argued that Rama was no ordinary prince but a manifestation of divine power, and that a king who had conquered the three worlds had no reason to provoke a war of annihilation over another man's wife. Ravana's brother Vibhishana said the same things. Ravana dismissed them both.

Over the Body

Ravana fell in the final battle against Rama. Mandodari came to the battlefield and mourned over his body. The Yuddha Kanda gives her lamentation at length: she recalled how he had conquered the three worlds and pleased Shiva with his devotion, then asked how such a man could be brought down by a mortal's arrow. She knew the answer. He had taken another man's wife, and everything that followed was the consequence.

After Rama installed Vibhishana as the new king of Lanka, some traditions record that Mandodari married him. The queen of the dead king became the queen of his successor.