Hanuman

The child was hungry, and the sun looked like a ripe mango. He did not think about the distance. He gathered his legs beneath him, sprang off the forest floor, and rose through the cold upper air toward the burning fruit, arms outstretched, closing the gap between a monkey’s appetite and the center of the sky. Only a thunderbolt stopped him. Indra, seeing a small figure hurtling toward the sun as if to eat it, struck him across the jaw and sent him tumbling back to the ground, breaking the bone and leaving the mark that gave him his name. Hanuman means, by one reading, the one with the ruined jaw.

That disfigurement is the first thing to know about him, because it is a boy’s mistake and a god’s origin at once. Vayu, the wind and Hanuman’s father, saw his son fall and pulled every breath of air out of the world in grief. Crops died. Lungs emptied. The gods, choking, came to make peace, and each of them laid a gift on the unconscious child to bring the air back. Indra promised that no weapon of his would ever wound him again and gave his body the hardness of the vajra. Brahma made him unkillable in battle. Agni granted him immunity to fire. Surya taught him a portion of his own light. By the time he woke, the broken-jawed infant had become something close to indestructible, and he did not fully remember any of it.

His birth is told more than one way, which suits a figure who belongs to so many traditions. Anjana, an apsara cursed to live as a vanara, prayed to Shiva for a child. In the most repeated account, King Dasharatha of Ayodhya was conducting a rite to gain sons, and a kite carried off a portion of the sacred pudding meant for his queens, dropping it over the forest where Anjana worshipped. Vayu guided the falling morsel into her open hands. She ate it, and Hanuman was born, son of the wind through the offering, son of the vanara chief Kesari by marriage. Some tellings make him an aspect of Shiva himself. The stories do not agree, and the disagreement has never diminished him.

For most of his childhood his powers slept under a sage’s curse, a punishment for the mischief that came with unearned strength. He grew up not knowing what he could do. That changes in the Ramayana, when Rama’s wife Sita is stolen away to the island fortress of Lanka and the vanara army needs someone to cross the sea and find her. Jambavan, the old bear, reminds Hanuman of who he is. The memory lands like weather. He grows until he blots out the beach, plants his feet on a mountain until it sinks under him, and launches himself across the ocean, a monkey the size of a storm cloud tearing a wake through the sky.

The crossing is the heart of his legend, and it is full of obstacle. A sea-serpent mother named Simhika tries to swallow him by seizing his shadow; he shrinks to a speck, darts through her body, and bursts out the other side. A mountain rises from the water offering rest; he touches it in courtesy and flies on. He reaches Lanka at nightfall, shrinks to the size of a cat, and slips between the columns of Ravana’s city, moving through torchlit halls thick with the smell of sandalwood and sleeping soldiers until he finds Sita in a grove, guarded, grieving, refusing to be comforted. He gives her Rama’s ring. Then, because subtlety was never the whole of him, he lets himself be captured, permits the demons to set his tail alight, and hops from rooftop to rooftop until half the golden city is burning behind him.

Later, in the war itself, comes the act people remember best. Lakshmana, Rama’s brother, falls with a wound that will kill him by dawn unless a specific healing herb is brought from a mountain in the far Himalayas. Hanuman flies north. Standing on the slope in the dark, unable to tell one glowing plant from another, he does the only sensible thing available to a being of his scale. He tears the entire mountain out of the earth and carries it back through the night sky in one hand, so the physicians can pick the herb themselves. He is faithful more than he is clever, and here the two amount to the same thing.

His strength has limits, and they are the interesting kind. It is not raw force that undoes his enemies but his refusal to keep anything for himself. He is chaste, humble to the point of self-erasure, and happiest kneeling. His one recurring vulnerability is the curse of forgetting: his gifts lie dormant until someone reminds him, so his power depends on being told who he is. He can be bound, briefly, by weapons he chooses to honor, as when he allows Indrajit’s serpent-arrow to hold him rather than insult the god who fired it. And his devotion, absolute as it is, ties his whole strength to Rama. Left to himself he is a mountain-lifting immortal. Given a task by the one he loves, he is unstoppable. The difference is the entire point of him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Hanuman?

Hanuman is a divine vanara, or monkey being, of Hindu mythology, celebrated as the greatest devotee of the god Rama. He is one of the central heroes of the epic Ramayana and among the most widely worshipped figures in Hinduism, invoked for strength, courage, and protection.

Why is Hanuman called the one with the broken jaw?

The name Hanuman is often read as “one with a disfigured jaw,” from a childhood myth. As an infant he mistook the sun for a ripe fruit and leapt to eat it, and the god Indra struck him down with a thunderbolt, breaking his jaw and leaving a permanent mark.

What are Hanuman’s powers?

Hanuman can change his size at will, growing mountainous or shrinking to a thumb’s span, and possesses immense strength, flight, and near-invulnerability. Boons from the gods made him immune to fire and weapons, and as a chiranjivi he is immortal, believed never to have died.

What did Hanuman do in the Ramayana?

Hanuman leapt across the ocean to the fortress island of Lanka to find the kidnapped Sita, delivered Rama’s ring to her, and set the city ablaze with his burning tail. During the war he carried an entire Himalayan mountain of healing herbs to save the mortally wounded Lakshmana.

Why is Hanuman worshipped so widely?

Hanuman is revered as the model of selfless devotion, humility, and loyalty, and his worship spans wrestlers, travelers, students, and anyone facing fear. Believed to still be present wherever the Ramayana is recited, he is prayed to for physical strength and for protection against evil.

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Rama, Sita, Ravana, Vayu, Vanara, Jatayu, Sampati, Shurpanakha, Vishnu, Shiva, Rakshasa, Arjuna