Hanuman

A figure stands on the shore at the southern tip of India. Before him lies the ocean. It is vast. There is no sign of the far shore.

On the other side is the island of Lanka. That is where Sita is held captive. It is a place no one dares to go.

The figure on the shore is Hanuman. And at this moment, he does not know how strong he is.

The epic known as the Valmiki Ramayana tells that when Hanuman was a child, the sages laid a curse on him. The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic, composed in Sanskrit. The curse sealed away his strength. He would forget his own strength, until someone reminded him.

And now, the one who will remind him speaks up.

Jambavan, the old king of the bears, steps forward. He tells Hanuman the story of Hanuman's own life.

He tells him that he is the son of Vayu, the god of the wind, and of Anjana, a heavenly nymph. That as a small child, he once took the sun for a ripe red fruit and leaped into the sky to catch it. That the god Indra struck his jaw with a thunderbolt, and from then on he bore the name Hanuman. That the gods granted him a boon: no weapon could kill him.

Each of Jambavan's words is like a flame. Hanuman grows larger. And larger still. Now he remembers.

He sets his hands and feet on Mount Mahendra. The rock cracks. Flowers fall. The trees bend low under his breath.

Then Hanuman leaps.

He soars across 100 yojanas of sky. A yojana is an old Indian measure of distance. His shadow stretches over the water like a drifting cloud.

The ocean does not let him pass easily.

The mountain Mainaka rises from the middle of the sea and invites him to stop and rest. Hanuman touches it in thanks, but he does not stop. His mission is waiting.

Then the serpent goddess Surasa blocks his way, opening her mouth wide to swallow him. Hanuman makes himself tiny, darts straight into the serpent's mouth, and shoots out again before she can close it. Cleverness, not strength.

Then the demoness Simhika, lurking deep beneath the sea, seizes his shadow and drags him down. Hanuman does not falter. He moves fast, overcomes the demoness, and flies on.

At last, the island of Lanka comes into view. Hanuman lands. Then he makes himself small, no bigger than a cat, and slips quietly into the city by night.

He searches everywhere. And then, in the Ashoka grove of the royal palace, he finds her.

Sita sits beneath a tree, her face worn thin from fasting, her eyes like lotus petals. Around her are the demonesses who guard her. But she still holds her head high.

Hanuman waits for the guards to fall asleep. Then he creeps closer and places Rama's ring in her hand.

She goes still. Then her hands close tightly around the ring. Her own husband has sent this messenger. This is hope, still alive.

In return, she gives Hanuman a treasure called the chudamani. It is a precious hairpin her father gave her on her wedding day. "Take it back to him," she says. "So he knows I am still waiting."

Before leaving Lanka, Hanuman lets himself be captured. He is bound by the divine weapon Brahmastra and led before Ravana, the demon king. Ravana's younger brother Vibhishana is an upright man, and he argues that an envoy must not be killed. So Ravana orders Hanuman's tail to be set on fire.

The demons wrap cloth soaked in oil around his tail, set it alight, and parade him through the streets to the sound of drums.

But the fire does not burn Hanuman. The story goes that Sita's prayers and a boon from the god of fire kept him safe.

And then, the punishment becomes a weapon.

Hanuman slips free of his bonds. He leaps onto the rooftops. With his blazing tail, he sets fire to one mansion after another. All of Lanka glows bright in the night.

But there is one house he spares on purpose. It belongs to Vibhishana, who chose what is good. Even in the heart of enemy land, Hanuman can still tell the wicked from the just. This is a mission of rescue, not destruction. When it is done, he dips his tail into the sea to put out the flames.

Hanuman returns. Rama leads a great army across the sea, and war with Ravana begins. On one dark night of the fighting, Rama's younger brother Lakshmana falls, gravely wounded. Only a divine healing herb from the Himalayas can save him. Hanuman flies off to find it. But when he arrives, the healing plants hide themselves, and he cannot tell one from another.

So Hanuman does what no one expects. He slides his hands beneath the foot of the mountain and lifts out the whole peak. He flies the entire summit back to the battlefield. And Lakshmana is saved.

Hanuman's monkey army has left its mark in Vietnam, too.

At the Cham towers of Khương Mỹ, in what is now the city of Da Nang, the ancient Cham carved a scene into stone. It shows the vanara, the monkey army, carrying rocks to build a bridge across the sea to Lanka. The Cham are a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa. Some of those carved slabs are now kept in the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang.

Older still, at Trà Kiệu, a stone inscription of King Prakasadharman from the 7th century dedicated a sacred site to Valmiki, who is traditionally honored as the author of the Ramayana. That means the story was already revered in what is now Vietnam 14 centuries ago.

And in the Lĩnh Nam chích quái, a Vietnamese book of the 14th century, the tale of Dạ Xoa retells the Ramayana. In it, the monkey army itself defeats the demon king and rescues the young woman. The army of Hanuman, in a Vietnamese tale.

The ocean is still there. And there is always someone who dares to leap.