[Advaita-l] Was Ravana a devotee of Lord Shiva?

[V Subrahmanian]

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 8:23 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> There are indirect references in the vAlmIki rAmAyaNa, but no direct
> details
> of rAvaNa's bhakti towards Siva.
>
>
>
> In the previous chapter, sItA had already obliquely referred to Siva in
> comparison
> to rAvaNa.
>
> mandaraM parvataSreshTham pANinA hartum ichhasi |
> kAlakUTaM vishaM pItvA svastimAn gantum icchasi || (araNya kANDa, 47.40)
>
> "You wish to take away the mandara mountain by hand? You wish to walk away
> unharmed after consuming poison?" The reference here is to the kUrmAvatAra
> when Siva drank the kAlakUTa poison while vishNu supported mandara.
>

Is there any standard commentary to the Valmiki RamayaNa?  Is the
GovindarAjIyam accepted as a standard one?  I wish to know if any
commentator has explicitly stated Shiva as the one being referred here with
regard to the kAlakUTa poison.  The question arises because of a discussion
that ensued in this connection in the 'bharatiya vidwat parishad' group
recently:

http://groups.google.com/group/bvparishat/browse_thread/thread/5e09c8bd55ebfa53#

subrahmanian.v