Book excerpt: RAVANA The Great King of Lanka BY M S PURNALINGAM PILLAI first published in 1923. If the hasty Reader, who has professed himself to be a highly discerning critic and to be endowed with the indispensable technique of the proverbial Indian 'annam' or swan, should chance to come across this little book, he would certainly play to the gallery with the blazing head-line Rakshas ! Excelsior ! It is hard to expect that men who have moved in particular grooves for years will ever easily get out of them or that the deep-rooted prejudices consecrated by time and circumstances will die an easy death. The much-maligned Ravana of the earliest Aryan Chronicler and purana writer and of the thoughtless Dravidian echoer of subsequent times cannot have his merits-and virtues duly recognized until English education, now pursued merely as bread-study, broadens and liberalizes the cramped and idea-obsessed Indian mind and wipes out his slave mentality altogether. If this booklet will provoke thought on the subject, its author will feel amply repaid for his labours.