Hanuman, The Embodiment Of Virtue
The story of Hanuman appears in one of the oldest works of literature the world has ever seen and it is as illuminating and as funny today as ever.
Rhythmic chanting, bells, and the blowing of Shanka conch shells accompany the fluttering pages of the tumbling tome that falls from the very heights of the Library of Found Things. Incense perfumed pages unfold and reveal the story of an unlikely hero, part monkey part man, whose embodiment of certain values reward him with a life worth retelling for thousands and thousands of years.
Long, long ago, before the civilisations we know of today were more than huddled groups of families, lived the divine Monkey-Man Hanuman.
Hanuman was a vanara, one of the forest-dwelling people, but the fortune of his birth made him somewhat different to the others. This is because Vayu, the God of Air and Wind, adopted the half-monkey-half-boy when he was born and this elevated the precocious young lad to a level of divinity unheard of among the vanara. However, precocious as he was, Hanuman had no special powers, as such. Not until he tried to snatch the sun out of the sky. You see, Hanuman was young and hungry. Desperately hungry. So when he saw a delicious-looking orb rising out of the ground he thought the gods must have made it for him to eat. Sadly, this was not so and the Lord of Gods, Indra, hit him with a thunderbolt to the jaw and left him stone-dead on the ground.
Vayu saw his adopted son dead and, in defiance of his lord, left the world and took all of the air with him. Before long, the gods realised that this was not a happy state of affairs for all the creatures on the earth and so Lord Shiva brought Hanuman’s corpse back to life. Vayu returned and all the creatures breathed a sigh of relief. Literally.
When he awoke, Hanuman found that the lightning bolt had given him incredible powers, which the other gods added to willingly. Indra made Hanuman as strong as himself; Vayu made him as fast as the wind; Brahma gave him the power to grow and shrink to any size; Varuna made it so water could not harm him; and Agni made it so fire could do him no harm either.
But Hanuman was young and foolish and he used his powers to play jokes on innocent people. One such innocent, an old man dedicated to meditation and worship of the gods, was so incensed at Hanuman’s pranks that he cursed him to forget all of the powers the gods had given him. The Gods, well aware of Hanuman’s immaturity, thought it best not to remind him of his powers until he matured.
The newly-humbled Hanuman, joined Prince Rama’s entourage as a servant. He served the powerful prince dutifully and leapt at the opportunity to find his wife, Princess Sita, after the wicked Demon King Ravana kidnapped her.
Hanuman travelled south as far as India’s southernmost tip but there was no sign of Sita. Then he saw, across the ocean, the island of Lanka. A vulture landed on the shore beside Hanuman and asked what he was doing there. Hanuman told the bird that he was looking for somebody the wicked King Ravana had kidnapped. The vulture nodded its head and told Hanuman that the island on the horizon was actually King Ravana’s kingdom, then swooped away unhelpfully on its enormous wings.
Hanuman lamented not having a boat and he knew he would certainly die if he tried to swim the strait, so he fell to his knees and begged the gods for an answer. Seeing Hanuman desperate to use his powers for the benefit of others, the gods gave him back his memory and Hanuman rose to the size of a mountain and leapt across the water to land on the island of Lanka.
When he landed, he saw King Ravana’s city was inhabited by demons so Hanuman shrunk to the size of an ant so as not to be seen. He disguised himself as a holy Brahmin and came across a beautiful grove full of the most delectable fruit. While there, he found Princess Sita under the watchful guard of King Ravana’s demons. They saw Hanuman and leapt upon him but, using his newly rediscovered powers, he was able to defeat them with ease. Stepping over the demon corpses, he approached Princess Sita and told her that he would return to her husband to tell him where she was and he would cross the ocean with a vast army to free her from this terrible city of demons.
With that, Hanuman left the grove but by this time the other demons had become wise to his deception. Between him and his goal of informing his master was a hoard of demons, all baying for Hanuman’s blood. He tore their limbs from their sockets, he left them limp and lifeless on the palace steps. His onslaught was unstoppable until one of King Ravana’s entourage took a celestial weapon and knocked Hanuman unconscious.
Inside King Ravana’s palace, the king’s advisors told him that he could not kill Hanuman because the vanara was a servant of Prince Rama and therefore was technically an envoy in their city. Since virtuous kings do not kill envoys, King Ravana decided instead to humiliate Hanuman by setting fire to his tail because, for a vanara, the desecration of their tail was the worst thing that could befall them.
King Ravana’s demons tied oil-soaked rags around Hanuman’s long and lustrous tail and lit it on fire. The flames erupted like a comet in the palatial court and set the demon king’s entourage scattering but Hanuman merely looked at the waving inferno behind him. He looked out of the window towards the rest of the demon-infested city and said to himself, “It would be proper to satiate this fire of my tail by offering it to these excellent houses.”*
And so he did. He leapt and swung and danced and twirled all across the city, razing the ancient and malevolent kingdom to the ground before the fire went out and his unscathed tail disappeared in a leap across the ocean. Some time later, Hanuman returned to Lanka at Prince Rama’s side and at the head of a vast army that decimated the demons and returned Princess Sita home.
This is one of the funniest and most edifying stories in Hinduism. We have Hanuman, a half-mortal raised to the celestial heights of divinity all because a god liked the look of him and then, shortly afterwards, another one launched a lightning bolt into his face. Unlike stories with ‘it was written’ in the main character’s past, this is a story of circumstance, adaptability, and kind-hearted justice.
Hanuman was not a perfect being, especially when he was younger, which gives the story so much humanity. He’s a little slow in that he mistakes the sun for some hanging fruit, he gets his powers and then immediately uses them like a teenager in an online game. He gets captured at the zenith of the story and still manages to come out unscathed because he embodies certain qualities that Hindus believe are paramount to living a good life. Of course, it’s not just Hindus who believe so, as you will see.
Brahmachari, Shakti and Bhakti mean Self-Control, Strength and Devotion respectively. This trifecta of qualities are at the heart of the story. Hanuman regains his powers when he learns self-control and devotion, during his time in Rama’s service. There is another connection between Shakti and Bhakti, however, and it is that a good person is expected to be strong - since everyone has their own strengths - but to employ those strengths in the service of others, without a desire for glory. Hanuman’s glory comes when he puts away selfish pranks and decides to direct his efforts towards good.
Vignhnahartā is the Hindu concept of ‘removing obstacles’ and Hanuman’s ability to increase his size or otherwise at will is an embodiment of that. It is the power to adapt himself to any situation. Size change is a rudimentary example of this adaptability but he uses it to great effect, from becoming an ant to infiltrate a palace of demons to becoming gargantuan in order to run the length of India to retrieve a whole mountain because he’s not sure which of the tiny herbs on the side will save a life, which he does later in the text. Sometimes ‘removing obstacles’ means changing / adapting ourselves when faced with an obstacle rather than picking it up and throwing it somewhere. If we are confronted by the ‘obstacle’ of an abusive partner, for instance, plucking up the courage to search deeply for our self-confidence and then using it to extract ourselves from the relationship makes the ‘obstacle’ disappear just as easily as painting the bastard blue and dumping him in the ocean.
Albeit, the latter is probably more satisfying but we’re looking for positive learning opportunities in this Substack. Perhaps I’ll write a “How to revenge” Substack in the future.
And finally, Tantra. Don’t worry, you haven’t been lured in to talk about sex, if that worries you. Tantra is the concept that all things in life (and beyond) are interwoven, connected. We see this in the story in Hanuman’s mistaking the sun for fruit, the consequences of which meant almost certain death for all things when Vayu left. It’s also present in how Hanuman receives information, from the wise vulture who tells him the location of King Ravana’s palace to the series of decisions and circumstances that unfold that result in the reinstating of his powers. People, animals, circumstances are all interwoven in a vast tapestry of this material reality … so don’t be a dick and things will probably turn out alright.
*Valmiki Ramayana, Sundara Kanda, 54.10