Manthara is the hunchbacked maid of King Dasharatha's wife, Kaikeyi, in the Ramayana, the older of the two major Indian epics.
Kaikeyi's mind is steadily poisoned by Manthara's
whisperings against Dasharatha's son Rama, the god-king who is the epic's
protagonist.
She persuades the queen that if she and her son Bharata are
permitted to survive after Rama is crowned Dasharatha's heir, they would be no
better than slaves.
Kaikeyi is persuaded by Manthara to claim two boons that
Dasharatha granted her years ago.
With the first boon, she orders Rama to be exiled to the
jungle for fourteen years, and with the second, she orders Rama's son Bharata
to be anointed heir in his stead.
The earliest version of the epic, Valmiki's Ramayana,
portrays Manthara as a true villain.
Although, given the concept in karma, her physical
impairments would have been perceived as showing moral and spiritual
deformities as well, there is little explanation for her behavior.
Manthara's actions is finally attributed to the gods in the
Ramayana, authored by the poet-saint Tulsidas (1532–1623? ), who send the
goddess Saraswati to muddle Manthara's mind, putting in motion the sequence of
events leading to the demon Ravana's destruction.
Tulsidas, in typical Tulsidas manner, gives the incident a
more altruistic spin, linking it to Rama's ultimate reason for being born on
Earth.
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