Hanuman

The summit of Mount Mahendra. Below it a hundred yojanas of sea, and on the far shore, in Lanka, Janaki held captive. Above it open sky, and between the two a single vanara who has just risen to his feet. Jambavan, the old bear, has just reminded him of what he is: the son of the wind, carrying a strength the sages’ curse had made him forget in childhood, as the Uttara Kanda tells in sarga 36. The Kishkindha Kanda gives the reminder in sarga 66, and it is enough. He plants both arms on the rock and bears down so hard that the mountain streams water. The leap has not yet begun. This is the moment in which Hanuman is most fully Hanuman, when a creature steps past the measured limit inside himself and sets his foot on a faith he has not measured.

Valmiki opens the Sundara Kanda on him with one plain sentence, in its first sarga: “The feat that was too hard for anyone else to attempt, he stood ready to accomplish alone, without any support at all.” No army, no bridge, no second plan. One resolve and the open sea.

His story begins before the sea. In the Kishkindha Kanda his first scene is on Rishyamukha, where Sugriva sees two armed princes climbing his mountain and sends his minister down to learn what they want. Hanuman comes to Rama and Lakshmana as a wandering mendicant, asks who they are, names Sugriva and then himself, and falls silent. Rama turns to his brother: “Nobody could speak as he has spoken who had not studied the Rigveda for its meaning, committed the Yajurveda to memory, and mastered the Samaveda. Surely he has gone through the whole of grammar many times over, for in all this speaking he has not let one wrong word slip past him.” That is the first thing anyone in the epic says about Hanuman, in sarga 3 of the Kishkindha Kanda, and it says nothing about his strength.

Then the sea. Mainaka rises golden out of the water to offer him rest, and Hanuman strikes it down with his chest before he knows what it is, hears the invitation out, and touches the peak with his palm as he goes. Surasa opens a mouth that reaches the sky and tells him the gods have appointed him her food. He grows to ten yojanas and she widens to twenty; at ninety and a hundred he sees the shape of the game, shrinks to a thumb’s size, and darts in and out of her mouth. Simhika takes hold of his shadow on the water and drags him to a stop; he swells so that she will open wide, drops in small, and tears out through her heart. Three obstacles in sargas 1 to 3 of the Sundara Kanda, and a different answer for each.

From the shade of the shinshapa to the burning tail

The first thing Hanuman does in the Ashoka grove is wait. He climbs a dense shinshapa beside a stream, reasoning that a daughter of Janaka will come to water at dawn and dusk. From the leaves he sees her, thin from fasting, ringed by rakshasis. In the last stretch of dark Ravana comes with a hundred women behind him and gives her two months to live. Hanuman does not leap down. Seated in the tree, in the plain speech of the country around Ayodhya, he tells the story of the house of Ikshvaku from Dasharatha down to his own leap; the Sundara Kanda sets the telling in sarga 31. Sita lifts her face toward the branch, and Valmiki says she saw him “like the sun risen in the east.” On the night her darkness ran deepest, the sun came up on the limb of a tree.

He climbs down and gives her the ring marked with Rama’s name. His errand is complete. He stays. He wrecks the grove, sparing her tree, and kills the Kinkaras, then Jambumali, then the boy prince Aksha. When Indrajit’s arrows fail and he looses the weapon of Brahma, Hanuman lets it bind him, though he could break it, because he wants to stand in front of Ravana and look at him; sarga 48 of the Sundara Kanda records the choice. Ravana’s men wrap his tail in oiled rags and set it alight; Sita asks the fire to be cool for him, and it turns cool. He snaps the cords, and that flame goes from roof to roof across the city, every lord’s house except Vibhishana’s. A vanara with a burning tail left Lanka that night to work out for itself what the master of such an envoy must be like.

Into the Yuddha Kanda he keeps doing whatever is hardest. When Indrajit’s invisible war lays Rama and Lakshmana senseless under the weapon of Brahma, Jambavan asks after Hanuman before anyone else and sends him to the Himalaya, to a mountain of herbs between the peaks of Rishabha and Kailasa, for four herbs with the mritasanjivani among them. The herbs hide themselves from him, so he breaks off the peak and carries the whole of it across the sea, and the two sons of Dasharatha are healed by the fragrance alone. The Yuddha Kanda tells it in sarga 74, and again in sarga 101, when Ravana’s lance fells Lakshmana and Sushena sends him back. After the victory Rama sends him into Lanka with the sweetest news of the war. “Be at peace, Sita. Let go of all fear, for the enemy Ravana is dead and Lanka is subdued.” Her whole reply, in sarga 113, is one line: “I long only to see my husband, who loves his own.” The one who carried the first message carries the last.

Centuries later, in the sixteenth century by the common reckoning, comes the Hanuman Chalisa, attributed to Tulsidas and composed in Awadhi, the everyday speech of the country around Lucknow. Into its forty quatrains go the same leap, the ring carried in his mouth across the sea, the sanjivani, and the burning of Lanka, folded into a prayer households recite on Tuesdays. In Valmiki he is Sugriva’s minister and Rama’s envoy; in the Chalisa he is the keeper of Rama’s door, asked for strength, intelligence, and knowledge. Each text keeps its own Hanuman.

His path

Hanuman and Rama’s first meeting · A mendicant comes down from Rishyamukha to question two armed princes, and Rama hears the three Vedas in his sentences.

The crossing of the sea · Mainaka touched with a palm, Surasa entered at a thumb’s size, Simhika torn open from inside: sargas 1 to 3 of the Sundara Kanda.

The Ashoka grove and the darshan of Sita · The night in the shinshapa, Ravana’s two-month term, the story of the Ikshvakus told into the dark, and a ring marked with Rama’s name.

The burning of Lanka · The grove wrecked, the Kinkaras and Jambumali down, the weapon of Brahma accepted, and a burning tail that lights every roof except one.

The swoon on the field and the herb mountain · Rama and Lakshmana senseless under Indrajit’s weapon, Jambavan’s directions to the herb mountain, and a peak carried back across the sea.

The message to Sita after the victory · Vibhishana crowned, and the envoy who found her sent back to say that Ravana has fallen; her whole reply is a wish to see her husband.

Hanuman Chalisa · Forty quatrains in Awadhi, attributed to Tulsidas: the ring in his mouth, the sanjivani, and a prayer for strength, intelligence, and knowledge.

The Ramayana, all seven kandas · Bala to Uttara in one sequence, Hanuman’s thread surfacing in the fourth, fifth, and sixth kandas.

The moment before the leap

What stays longest from Hanuman’s story is that his own strength had gone out of his memory. The sages’ curse left the power in place and took away the knowledge of it, so that an old bear had to tell him who he was before he could stand up. Most people live in that condition, waiting for a Jambavan. The second thing is that he brings a different instrument to every door: for Mainaka a touch of the palm, for Surasa a thumb’s size, for Simhika the nails, for Sita a story told from a tree, for Ravana plain speech and then fire. Strength joined to the judgment of when and how much and in what shape made him the center of the Sundara Kanda. On fear his answer is the vow he spoke on Mahendra before he jumped, to find Sita or bring Ravana back in chains or carry Lanka itself across the water, which left him no shape of failure to be afraid of. On faithfulness the answer is the way he reports. He crosses the ocean twice, empties an army, burns a capital, and tells Jambavan and Angada, in brief, that the queen has been seen; the full account he keeps for Rama at Prasravana. To gather that much glory into one short sentence and lay the rest at his master’s feet is the thing in him that rises higher than the leap.