Hanuman, the divine monkey of the Ramayana

Among the characters of the Rāmāyaṇa, the great epic poem attributed to the sage Vālmīki, few are as beloved as Hanuman, the chief of the monkeys who becomes Rāma's most faithful servant. Endowed with enormous strength, able to change his size and to fly, Hanuman is venerated throughout India as a model of devotion and courage, and his temples are found in villages as well as in great cities.

The son of the wind

According to tradition Hanuman was the son of Añjanā and of the wind god Vāyu, from whom he is said to have inherited the ability to fly. One story tells that as a child he mistook the sun for a ripe fruit and leapt into the sky to seize it; Indra struck him on the jaw with his thunderbolt, and from this episode his name is said to derive, often explained as «the one with the marked jaw».

In the poem Hanuman is a vānara, a term indicating a people of monkeys gifted with speech and intelligence, allies of King Sugrīva. When Rāma searches for his wife Sītā, abducted by the demon Rāvaṇa, Hanuman becomes his decisive helper. His figure brings together qualities that Indian culture regards as exemplary: physical strength, humility, eloquence, knowledge of the scriptures and total dedication.

The leap to Lanka

The fifth book of the poem, the Sundara Kāṇḍa, is devoted almost entirely to his deeds. Hanuman crosses the ocean in a single leap, reaches the island of Laṅkā, finds Sītā held captive in a grove of aśoka trees and gives her Rāma's ring as a token of recognition. Captured by the demons, he is sentenced to have his tail set on fire, but he uses it to set the city ablaze.

During the war that follows, Rāma's brother Lakṣmaṇa falls gravely wounded. The myth relates that Hanuman flew to the Himalayas to fetch a wondrous herb and, unable to recognise it, lifted the entire mountain and carried it to the battlefield. For this reason he is often depicted in flight with a mountain in one hand and his mace in the other.

From popular devotion to Tulsīdās

Devotion to Hanuman grew above all in the medieval period. In the sixteenth century the poet Tulsīdās composed in the Awadhi language the Rāmcaritmānas, a new telling of the story of Rāma, and tradition also attributes to him the Hanumān Cālīsā, forty verses in praise of the god recited today by millions of people. In these texts Hanuman becomes the example of the perfect devotee, who asks nothing for himself.

Hanuman is considered one of the chiranjīvīs, the beings who according to tradition will live until the end of the present age. His birth is celebrated in the festival of Hanuman Jayanti, and near many temples monkeys, especially langurs, are protected and fed. Some scholars have suggested that his figure helped to inspire the monkey king Sun Wukong of the Chinese novel Journey to the West, but the question is debated.

The figure of Hanuman shows how an animal can become the image of an inner virtue. His monkey body, agile and unpredictable, has been read by some commentators as a symbol of the restless mind that devotion makes steady. In his best-known iconography the god opens his own chest to reveal Rāma and Sītā in his heart, a perfect summary of his story.