ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a survey of the presentation of the secondary women characters inherited from the Valmiki tradition. The story of Ravana's encounter with Rambha and Nalakubara, however, is not jettisoned but 'corrected', remodelled and greatly expanded, in line with the stated aim of Vimalasuri and his successors. A wife often considered 'lustful' in the brahmanic Rama tradition is Ahalya, whose liaison with Indra, whether she is innocent or guilty, leads to her suffering a curse imposed by her outraged husband, the sage Gautama. Kaikeyi is the devoted mother of both Bharata and Satrughna in others. The understandable anxiety and longing of Kausalya and Sumitra during the extensive period of their sons' forest-wanderings has meanwhile been turned to agonising torment by the news brought by Hanuman. In the Jain material, when Mandodari is presented as the mother of Sita her attitude to Ravana is appropriately modified.
