Ravana Statue of Mount Kailasa in the Palace Garden

The Ravana Statue of Mount Kailasa in the Palace Garden is at once a monumental religious sculpture and the concealed terminus of a subterranean passage. Its carefully constructed hollow makes the sculptural mountain a screen for hidden movement: Mandhakini emerges through it, strikes at the figure supporting it, and later returns to descend through the opening with Poonguzhali. The statue’s changing role—from sacred image to secret architecture and apparent target—makes it a focal point of discovery, danger, and misunderstanding.

Sculptural Design and Setting

The statue depicts Raavanan, the ten-headed demon-king, lifting the divine mountain abode of Kailaiyangiri in his twenty hands. At the summit sit Siva Peruman and Parvathi Devi. The image makes the mountain appear to rest on the demon-king’s raised arms, but the base actually caves inward. That physical gap is crucial: the elaborate figure conceals a space that would be difficult to notice from outside.

The statue stands in the palace’s chamber of sculptures, within a larger arrangement of monumental religious and legendary figures. Nearby images include Sibi Chakravarthy, who gives his own flesh to save a dove, and Siva Peruman with the River Ganga flowing through his hair. The sculpted river continues through a landscape in which Agasthiyar releases a stream that grows into the Kaveri, passing rocky outcrops, cliffs, wooded areas, and Sivan shrines before meeting a high wall at the ocean. The Ravana Statue is therefore part of an expansive sacred landscape in stone, not an isolated ornament; its hollow passage is hidden within a setting already filled with elaborate visual narratives.

The Concealed Passage

The passage ends beneath the mountain figure. Mandhakini reaches the chamber by climbing steps at the end of a long underground tunnel and squeezing through a gap between the statue’s limbs. From within the sculpture, the passage is so cleverly concealed that its existence would not occur to someone inspecting the chamber. The hollow can also serve as a hiding place. The statue thus performs a double architectural function: it completes the visible sculptural scene while masking an opening into a space beneath it.

The hidden route becomes legible to other characters only through successive clues. When Mandhakini claims to have hurt herself by walking into a mountain, Vanathi suggests that she may have struck the massive Raavanan sculpture in the palace garden. The explanation astonishes the listeners, and Kundhavai praises Vanathi for noticing the detail that had escaped them. The exchange turns an apparently absurd account of an injury into a plausible clue about the statue’s importance and Mandhakini’s presence in the chamber.

Damage, Misreading, and Recognition

The statue becomes a source of immediate physical danger when Mandhakini stands at a distance and repeatedly swings a long-handled hammer at Raavanan’s muscular arms. The stone figure has not yet shifted, but even the collapse of two or three arms could bring the mountain down and crush the demon-king’s heads. Kundhavai and the others enter at this critical moment. Mandhakini drops the hammer when she sees them and looks at them with a serene smile. The scene leaves the witnesses confronting both the danger to the sculpture and the difficulty of interpreting her actions.

Later, Poonguzhali follows Mandhakini to the chamber, fearing that her aunt intends to renew the attack. A glimpse of what seems to be a head between Raavanan’s heads and the mountain briefly unsettles her; she attributes it to drowsiness or to shadows cast by the newly carried lamp. Mandhakini, however, is looking not at the chisel lying at the statue’s foot but into the darkness between the demon-king’s limbs and the mountain. Raising the lamp reveals the hollow passage. Poonguzhali then understands that Mandhakini had tried to close this opening earlier that evening, while the others had prevented her, misunderstanding her purpose.

Final Use and Narrative Significance

Mandhakini signals for Poonguzhali to follow, folds herself into the narrow gap, and begins descending with the lamp. Poonguzhali squeezes in after her, twisting through the confined exit and taking care not to strike her head. First Mandhakini, then Poonguzhali, and finally the lamp disappear into the passage; darkness settles over the chamber again. The statue remains in place, its hidden opening once more concealed from view.

This sequence gives the object an unusual dramatic progression. Its sacred imagery first disguises a practical entrance; its stone arms then become the focus of a potentially destructive assault; finally, its hollow offers a route out of the palace. The near-invisible passage also shapes what the surrounding characters can know: Vanathi infers the connection from Mandhakini’s account, Poonguzhali confirms it by lifting a lamp, and those who earlier interrupted Mandhakini’s attempt to close the opening act without understanding what she has found. The mountain’s apparent solidity and its concealed emptiness make the statue an effective threshold between what the palace displays and what it keeps hidden.