> may actually be an early hominid that had ape-like features, that lived in parallel with humans in different territory. Perhaps, but it's impossible to prove

> may actually be an early hominid that had ape-like features, that lived in parallel with humans in different territory. Perhaps, but it's impossible to prove one way or another. More plausibly, they observed that primates possess a type of intelligence of a kind similar to humans, and therefore were readily adaptable to that role in the story. What we do know is that fantastical characters with human level sentience in the Ramayana exist primarily to engage the audience and to drive forward the epic's central themes of good vs evil. Fantastical creatures are a pattern of this sort of storytelling across the world. Modern storytellers have used the same technique to great effect, like the various species of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth or George Lucas's Galaxy Far Far Away. In this way, there is a striking contrast between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, despite emerging from the same cultural milieu as the Ramayana, is a complex human sociological drama without clear lines of good and evil. It makes little use of fantastical species, as their presence would detract from the story's fundamentally human themes. The only non human characters of consequence are gods, but even they are far from perfect and instead exhibit the same flaws as the humans.