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The Authentic Orthography

रावण Rāvaṇa

Ten-Headed King, Lanka · The ruler of Laṅkā and chief of the Rākṣasas, whose destruction by Rāmacandra forms the subject of the Rāmāyaṇa

Tier 1 Rāvaṇa
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Rāvaṇa — Ten-Headed King, Lanka
01

The Authentic Name

Unicode restoration and ASCII comparison

Original Script

रावण

The name in its original Sanskrit form. Rāvaṇa (रावण) is attested in the source tradition — “The ruler of Laṅkā and chief of the Rākṣasas, whose destruction by Rāmacandra forms the subject of the Rāmāyaṇa”. Its macron-length vowels and nasal retroflexes carry the full phonetic and orthographic weight of the source tradition.

ASCII Constraint

ravana

Reduced to plain ravana, the name loses everything that made it specific: macron-length vowels and nasal retroflexes. What remains is an ASCII string that machines can parse but that no longer speaks with its original voice.

Unicode Restoration

Rāvaṇa

The Unicode restoration recovers what ASCII flattened. Rāvaṇa restores macron-length vowels and nasal retroflexes, returning the name to its original written dignity. The domain encodes to Punycode, but the browser displays the truth.

Punycode Encoding
Rāvaṇa.com → xn--rvaa-qsa0806b.com

The non-ASCII characters in Rāvaṇa are encoded while the ASCII remains visible. To the DNS, it is Punycode. To humanity, it is Rāvaṇa.

02

Original Script & Provenance

How Rāvaṇa travels from ancient script to the modern URL

रावण
Devanagari
Rāvaṇa
र
Letter
ा
Letter
व
Letter
ण
Letter
Original Script
रावण
Indigenous writing
Transliteration
Rāvaṇa
Scholarly reading
Unicode Restoration
Rāvaṇa
Registrable form
Punycode
xn--Rvaa-qsa0806b.com
DNS encoding
ASCII Fallback
ravana
Flattened spelling

From original to transliteration

  1. Sanskrit Rāvaṇa is written in Devanagari as रावण
  2. IAST transliteration maps each Devanagari vowel and consonant to a Latin equivalent
  3. Macrons mark long vowels (ā, ī, ū); dots beneath consonants mark retroflex articulation (ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṣ)
Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English DictionaryTier 2
Macdonell, Sanskrit Grammar for StudentsTier 2
03

Name Variations

Owned, ideal, and ASCII forms of Rāvaṇa

Canonical Restoration

Rāvaṇa

Restores रावण. The full Unicode restoration. rāvaṇa.com is not in the PuniCodex collection — it is watched for release; if it drops, this temple upgrades to an owned flagship.

ASCII Form

ravana

Flattens रावण. The plain ASCII fallback — what DNS and legacy systems see.

04

Pronunciation

How Rāvaṇa was spoken

/ravana/ Sanskrit Reconstruction
R Initial character of the restored form Rāvaṇa.
āvaṇa Remainder of the name, preserving the distinctive marks of the Sanskrit tradition.

Modern Approximation

'RAVANA' — pronounce the restored form with attention to the preserved diacritics and length.

Etymological Kin

  • Sanskrit Rāvaṇa, the restored Unicode form of the name

The Accent / Script Rule

Rāvaṇa is Tier 1 because the Sanskrit form preserves distinctive features that ASCII loses: stress, length, or special characters.

05

Ten-Headed King

Ten-Headed King, Lanka

Rāvaṇa belongs to the Sanskrit tradition, where it is associated with ten-headed king, lanka.

Ten-Headed King

The central domain of Rāvaṇa in the sanskrit tradition.

The ruler of Laṅkā and chief of the Rākṣ

The name signifies "The ruler of Laṅkā and chief of the Rākṣasas, whose destruction by Rāmacandra forms the subject of the Rāmāyaṇa".

Unicode Restoration

The restoration Rāvaṇa recovers what plain ASCII ravana flattens.

Original Attestation

Attested in the sources as —.

Sacred Symbols

Restored Name The Unicode form Rāvaṇa carries the original marks of the Sanskrit tradition.
Source Script Preserved through scholarly transliteration and canonical sources.
Domain Ten-Headed King, Lanka
Etymology The ruler of Laṅkā and chief of the Rākṣasas, whose destruction by Rāmacandra forms the subject of the Rāmāyaṇa
06

Mythology

Stories of Rāvaṇa

The stories of Rāvaṇa circulate within the Sanskrit corpus, where the figure embodies ten-headed king, lanka.

Sources

Primary Attestation

Rāvaṇa is attested in the canonical Sanskrit sources as a figure associated with ten-headed king, lanka.

Etymology

Name and Meaning

The name means "The ruler of Laṅkā and chief of the Rākṣasas, whose destruction by Rāmacandra forms the subject of the Rāmāyaṇa" and reflects the figure's role in the tradition.

Go Deeper

Extended Lore

Rāvaṇa embodies ten-headed king, lanka in the Sanskrit imagination. The name's restoration is not merely cosmetic: it recovers the stress, length, and script that make the figure recognizable in the source tradition.

Enter Extended Lore
Rāvaṇa mascot