Did Ravana have immense knowledge?
Is it true that Ravan had immense knowledge? Yes, definitely Ravan has composed for the praise of Lord Shiva called Astosirya Soutra which is called as Ravan Stuti it is not the praise of Ravan, it is praise by Ravan and even now if you go to Kashi Vishwanath temple the Kashi Vishwanath deity is here on the opposite side, Ravan Stuti is written over there so he certainly had a lot of learning and also some people say that he was a Brahmana and okay it is not that simple because his lineage has become a little complicated, he came from a Brahmana dynasty he was Vishrava, the sage Vishrava was his Vishrava or Pulasthya actually that whole lineage was there so he came from a lineage of Brahmanas but because just like if if say the mother and the father are from two different lineages then the child who is born, child can either have prominently the characteristics of the mother side or the father side so although his father was a sage now he had been seduced by a Rakshasa woman she wanted a progeny from him and so then when Ravan was born he primarily had the Rakshasa characteristics because what had happened was although he had a sage who had fathered him but it was the whole thing was not done in proper consciousness and it was so he was basically he had demonic mentality so he was from a Rakshasa lineage but he never from a Brahmana lineage as well as a Rakshasa lineage and he got the characteristics of the Rakshasa lineage primarily so he certainly had knowledge but he did not have knowledge about the purpose of knowledge it is that is the most important thing so we can get a lot of knowledge but if somebody doesn't have the knowledge of the purpose of knowledge then they can actually become very dangerous if somebody is ignorant they can't do much they can't do much harm also if somebody has medical knowledge then they can actually know if somebody has medical knowledge but does not have compassion or doesn't have the desire to heal people then what happens is they can actually they can either complicate people's diseases or they can even steal organs while they are treating somebody they can even kill someone in a cold blooded way actually if you see the civilization which caused the greatest deaths sometimes you think of first world war, second world war or now terrorism maximum deaths happened in the last century in Nazi Germany then the communist regimes almost 100 million people were killed in Russia as well as China which is more than both the world wars combined together and both these countries were very scientifically advanced even Germany was scientifically advanced so there was knowledge but there was no virtue there was no understanding of the purpose of knowledge so then what happens is people can become very dangerous so Ravan had a lot of knowledge but there was no understanding of the purpose of knowledge and because of that he abused all his knowledge.