There is hardly a village in India without him. Under a peepal tree or at a crossroads, a stone figure painted orange with sindoor stands with a mace on his shoulder or kneels with palms joined. Wrestlers pray to him before a bout, students before an exam, travellers before a night journey. And on Tuesdays and Saturdays, queues form outside his shrines in Delhi and Chennai, and in the temples that diaspora families have built in Leicester and New Jersey.
Hanuman is strength itself. The paradox at the centre of his story is that he never once used that strength for his own sake.
Birth and childhood
Hanuman was born to Anjana, a celestial being living as a vanara, one of the forest people of the Ramayana, and her husband Kesari. The wind god Vayu had a part in his birth, which is why Hanuman is called Pavanaputra and Maruti, son of the wind, and why he can fly and change his size at will.
As an infant he saw the rising sun and, thinking it a ripe fruit, leapt into the sky to eat it. Indra struck him with a thunderbolt and he fell, his jaw broken; the Sanskrit for jaw is hanu, and one tradition says this is how he got his name. Vayu, grieved, withdrew the air from the world, and the gods, to make amends, gave the child gifts: that no weapon could kill him, and that he could choose the moment of his death. Some tellings add that the sages, exasperated by his pranks, laid a mild curse on him: he would forget his own powers until someone reminded him. This small detail explains a great deal of what follows.
He grew up as a minister of Sugriva, the exiled monkey king. When Rama and Lakshmana came searching for the abducted Sita, Sugriva sent Hanuman to find out who they were. In Valmiki's Ramayana, Hanuman takes the form of a wandering ascetic and speaks to the brothers so courteously and precisely that Rama remarks on it to Lakshmana: no one, he says, could speak like that without having mastered the Vedas and grammar. Hanuman's first strength was not his arm but his speech, and his speech was gentle. From that meeting on, he belonged to Rama.
In Rama's service
The leap to Lanka
The search parties went out in four directions, and the southern one, with Hanuman in it, reached the shore and stopped. Lanka lay a hundred yojanas across the sea. One by one the monkeys and bears confessed how far they could jump, and none could make it. Hanuman sat silent, and it was the old bear Jambavan who remembered the curse and reminded him who he was.
Then Hanuman grew. He grew until he was the size of a mountain, and leapt. On the way the mountain Mainaka rose from the sea to offer him rest; he touched it with his hand in thanks and flew on. The serpent-mother Surasa opened her mouth to swallow him, and he grew until she matched him, then shrank to the size of a thumb, flew in and out of her mouth and bowed to her. The demoness Simhika caught his shadow to drag him down; her he killed. He landed on Lanka at nightfall, shrank to the size of a cat, and searched the city.
He found Sita in the Ashoka grove, under guard, refusing Ravana. He gave her Rama's ring, took her hair ornament in return, and then, because he was Hanuman, let himself be captured so that he could see Ravana's court and deliver a warning. His tail was set alight; he used the flame to burn the city. Back on the northern shore, the first words he spoke were drishta Sita, "Sita has been seen", before anything about himself.
This whole episode is the Sundara Kanda, the beautiful book, and it is the one section of the Ramayana that many Hindus read on its own as a prayer.
The mountain of herbs
In the war that followed, Lakshmana was struck down by Indrajit, Ravana's son, and lay dying. The physician Sushena said only certain herbs from the Himalaya could save him. Hanuman flew north. On the mountain he searched for the herbs, could not tell them from the others in the dark, and did what any sensible devotee would do: he lifted the entire mountain and carried it back. In most tellings the herb is called Sanjeevani, the giver of life, and the sight of Hanuman flying with a mountain on his palm is one of the best-loved images in Hindu art. Lakshmana was healed before sunrise.
There is a lesson here that is easy to miss. Hanuman did not pretend to knowledge he lacked; he brought everything and let the one who knew choose.
The opened chest
After Rama's coronation in Ayodhya, gifts were given to all who had served. Sita placed a necklace of pearls around Hanuman's neck. He took it off, bit each pearl open and threw it aside. The courtiers were offended: was this how a monkey treated a queen's gift? Hanuman said he was looking for Rama in the pearls, and anything without Rama in it was of no use to him. Someone asked whether Rama was in Hanuman's own body, then. He tore open his chest with his nails, and there, in his heart, sat Rama and Sita.
This story is not in Valmiki; it belongs to the later devotional tradition, and it has become the most reproduced image of him. It says in one gesture what the whole Ramayana says about him.
Strength held lightly
A verse often attributed to Hanuman sums up his relationship with Rama. When he thinks of himself as a body, he says, he is Rama's servant. When he thinks of himself as a soul, he is a part of Rama. When he knows himself as the Self, he and Rama are one. All three are true, and Hanuman lived at all three levels at once. He never asked for a reward. In Tulsidas's telling, when Rama praised him after the burning of Lanka, Hanuman answered that it was all Rama's glory and none of his own greatness.
That is the teaching. Strength that knows where it came from does not need to prove itself. It can afford to be gentle, to serve, to bow to Surasa and touch Mainaka in thanks. The wrestler and the student who pray to Hanuman are not asking to become more powerful. They are asking to carry what power they have the way he did.
A note on the Hanuman Chalisa
In the sixteenth century the poet-saint Tulsidas, who gave North India its Ramayana in the Ramcharitmanas, wrote forty verses in Awadhi in praise of Hanuman. Chalisa simply means "forty". It is probably the most recited hymn in the Hindu world today, chanted by people who cannot read and learnt by children before they understand it. The opening doha asks:
Bal buddhi vidya dehu mohi, harahu kalesh vikar.
"Give me strength, wisdom and knowledge, and remove my afflictions and impurities." Strength is the first thing asked for and purity is the last word. That is the whole balance of Hanuman in a single line.
Bringing it home
You do not need to be able to leap an ocean. Pick one thing this week that is in front of you and do it fully, without wondering what you will get for it. If you know the Chalisa, read it on a Tuesday morning; if you do not, read the Sundara Kanda in any language you have. And when something goes well, try saying what Hanuman said: it was not my strength. See how it changes the room.