Is it true that Ravana had 10 heads or is this just something figurative?

Question:

Is it true that Ravana had 10 heads or is this just something figurative that serves to emphasize something, like the anarthas of this demon?

Answer:

One of the many perspectives from which we can analyze the question you ask me is to understand who the authors of literature of great importance are, such as Valmiki for the Ramayana, Parasara Muni for the Visnu Purana, Vyasadeva for the Maha-bharata, Suta Gosvami for the Srimad-Bhagavatam and others.

It seems clear beyond any doubt that they were all earnest and extraordinarily intelligent savants, and certainly not people who enjoyed telling children’s tales and stories.

Whenever what they said was allegorical, they stated it, as in the case of the story of King Puranjana that we find in the fourth canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam or the Upakhyane Upadesa explained by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati.

Valmiki had 24,000 lines to tell his readers that what he was telling was not historical fact, but he didn’t.

An evaluation of this type, that is to say, to argue whether the right to establish whether a fact is historical or not without any proof, if we do it, is very dangerous because then one could doubt anything, including the historical authenticity of Krishna, of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and any other personality of our tradition. And non-devotee historians would have a duty to provide evidence that Jesus Christ really existed, as well as Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Columbus, etc. To prove the historical authenticity of all these personalities, there is only one thing: documents based on writings transmitted to the present day.

Ultimately, unless we have proof or an Acarya of divine origin says otherwise, we should take literally what the Sastra says.

This is a section of the book “On a Silver Platter”.

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