Chapter 1

Anjana's son

A child born out of a curse, and Indra wounded him on his first day

There was a condition hidden in the curse

Anjana was not a vanara to begin with. She was the apsara Punjikasthala, and she had made the mistake of breaking a sage's austerities. The sage cursed her — be born as a vanara.

But as with every curse, a way was left in this one: "When a son is born of your womb who is himself a portion of Shiva, only then will this form leave you."

Anjana became a vanara, married the vanara Kesari, and then went up to a mountain top and sat down to her own austerities — not to complete the terms of the curse, but for the son she wanted.

"I want a son," she said to Vayu, who blew across that mountain. "One who never loses."

Vayu gave his word

Vayu stopped. "Your austerity will not go for nothing. The son you get will be mine as well — no less than me in strength."

At that same time, far off in Ayodhya, Dasharatha was performing the putrakameshti, and a drop of the payasam from that fire was carried on the wind to Anjana. Anjana took it.

She conceived.

The birth, and a leap at the sun

The son was born — a red face, a body like copper, and a strength he did not yet know he had. Morning came, the sun rose, and the infant saw that shining ball.

He took it for fruit.

Without thinking he leapt — up into the sky, straight at the sun. The tops of the trees fell away behind him, the clouds fell away, and the child went on through the air until he was near the sun.

The gods were watching from the sky. Nobody could see how this infant was going to stop.

Indra's thunderbolt

Rahu had come out that day to swallow the sun, and he took this flying child for a rival. At Rahu's call Indra arrived.

"Stop!" Indra roared. The child did not stop — the sun was still out of his reach, and getting to it was still to be done.

Indra raised the thunderbolt and threw it. It struck the child on the left jaw. The child began to fall out of the sky — and with that fall began everything that came afterwards.

Vayu's anger, and the world stopped breathing

Vayu saw his son falling. He caught him, took him into a cave — and then, in anger, drew the air out of the whole world.

Nowhere was anyone breathing. Trees still, rivers still, every living thing gasping. The gods understood that this anger would not settle without a boon.

"We are at fault," they said to Vayu. "Give your son back. We will make him such that nobody can ever hurt him again."

Two boons

The gods came forward one at a time. Brahma gave the first — "No weapon will kill him." Indra gave the second — "His death will come only by his own wish, at nobody else's hand."

The child's jaw — *hanu* — had been broken by that thunderbolt, and from that breaking came his name: Hanuman.

Vayu was calmed. The air came back. The world breathed again — and a child was now living whom no weapon could touch, and who could die only when he chose to.

A mischief that went a long way

After the boons the child Hanuman became fearless — so fearless that no weapon could touch him at all. He began scattering the materials of sacrifice in the hermitages, turning over the sages' water-pots, and jumping into the sacrificial fire to find that it could not burn him either.

One day a sage ran out of patience. He tried everything to stop the child — scolding him, reasoning with him — but the fearless boy would not be moved.

"You are so proud of your strength," the sage said. "Then hear this — you will forget it. Until somebody reminds you, you will not know yourself what you can do."

The curse took.

The strength was the same now, but not the memory of it.

The child Hanuman grew up — from fearless to quiet, from mischievous to silent — and unaware of his own strength.

Note: The birth, the leap at the sun, the thunderbolt and the boons — this whole episode comes in the Valmiki Ramayana at Kishkindha Kanda, sarga 66, in Jambavan's telling, and not in the Uttara Kanda as was earlier assumed. The curse of forgetting is in the Uttara Kanda, and in the Ramayana's own story it is compressed into a single line — there it is only the background to the crossing of the sea. Here that same event is the centre of Hanuman's own story.

Source: from several texts, Anjana's son

Now — how much stayed with you?

Whose son?

Whose word did Anjana receive, to get this son?

  • Vayu's
  • Indra's
  • Brahma's
  • Shiva's
Read the whole story — One austerity, two reasons

In the Valmiki Ramayana, Kishkindha Kanda 66.18–19, Jambavan tells Hanuman this very story — that Anjana was first the apsara Punjikasthala, became a vanara by a curse, and married Kesari.

In the classical terms Kesari is called the kshetraja father — in whose house the child was raised — and Vayu the aurasa father, whose strength came down into the child. Valmiki keeps both, and it is not a contradiction.

So two fathers stand together even in one story of Hanuman's, and that doubleness keeps returning through the whole gatha — strength and limit, memory and forgetting.

What happened?

What did the infant Hanuman do the very next day after his birth?

  • Cried for milk
  • Took the sun for fruit and leapt at it
  • Lifted a mountain
  • Fought with Kesari
Read the whole story — A hunger that went as far as the sky

Kishkindha Kanda 66.21–24 has this scene — the infant Hanuman flies at the sun taking it for fruit, without knowing how far off it is.

It was not a failure of a child's understanding — it was the first glimpse of his strength. That an infant sees no difference between sky and fruit is what tells you what this child will be able to do.

That leap is the first shadow of the leap across the sea later — with the difference that this time Indra will be standing in the way.

Who said it?

After the air was held back from the world, who came to appease Vayu?

  • Indra alone
  • Brahma alone
  • All the gods together
  • Kesari and Anjana
Read the whole story — When the whole world stopped

Kishkindha Kanda 66.27–29 has the next link — in Vayu's anger the air stops everywhere, and the gods come together to appease him.

This was not one father's grief alone. Vayu is the life-breath, so his stopping stops every living thing — which is what makes the scene so large.

What happened after the appeasing settled the whole rest of the child's life.

Fact

Where did the name Hanuman come from?

  • It was his name from birth
  • Vayu gave him the name
  • He received it after going to Lanka and coming back
  • From his jaw
Read the whole story — A wound that became a name

This same story in the Kishkindha Kanda says it — the jaw was broken by the thunderbolt, and the name came from that.

Which is to say the day Hanuman looked weakest — falling out of the sky, wounded — is the day whose mark became his permanent name, rather than any of his victories.

This keeps returning through the whole gatha: his identity is made of his wound and his strength together.

Why is that?

Why did the sages curse Hanuman to forget his own strength?

  • Because they wanted revenge for Indra's thunderbolt
  • Because the child, made fearless by his boons, went about causing havoc in the hermitages
  • Because they wanted to stop him going to Lanka
  • Because Kesari had asked for it himself
Read the whole story — A curse with a way left inside it

This same incident is in the Ramayana's Uttara Kanda — where it is told in a single line, because there it is only the background to what comes next, the crossing of the sea.

Here, in Hanuman's own story, that curse is the axis of the whole thing — the forgetting, the being reminded, and the using of what is remembered.

Like every curse, it had a condition hidden in it: somebody will remind you, and then it will break. That somebody turns out to be Jambavan — on a shore, years later.

Who am I?

I was an apsara of heaven. I made the mistake of breaking a sage's austerities, and the curse made me a vanara — but hidden in that same curse was a condition for getting a son. Who am I?

  • Anjana (Punjikasthala in an earlier birth)
  • Sita
  • Rohini
  • Surasa
Read the whole story — From apsara to vanara

In Kishkindha Kanda 66 it is Jambavan who tells Hanuman this whole lineage — Hanuman did not remember his own mother's story.

So the curse of forgetting that Hanuman struggles with is not the only one — his mother's story also begins with a curse, and opens by the condition hidden inside it.

That is the first layer of this gatha: here every generation moves forward only by passing through some curse.

The texts disagree

Whose portion is Hanuman actually held to be?

  • Only Vayu's
  • Only Shiva's
  • Only Brahma's
  • The texts say different things
Read the whole story — One identity, several claims

The Valmiki Ramayana plainly calls Hanuman the aurasa son of Vayu — the oldest and strongest thread.

In the tradition connected with the Shiva Purana, Hanuman is also held to be the eleventh Rudra avatar of Shiva himself — a claim not in Valmiki, developed in later Shaiva tradition.

This gatha does not settle any one claim as "right". As with the Ramayana and Mahabharata there is no single critical text here, so every large claim is recorded alongside the others — the same method as the Krishna-Leela.

Riddle

One of my names came from my worst wound, the other from my father. Weakness and strength are both in my name. Who am I?

  • Rama
  • Indra
  • Hanuman
  • Jambavan
Read the whole story — A whole life in two names

"Hanuman" — the memory of a broken *hanu*. "Maruti" or "Pavanasuta" — the mark of being the wind's son. Both names run together in tradition.

This riddle returns in later chapters of the gatha — every name of Hanuman's is the memory either of an event or of a relationship.

Worth noticing: his most lasting name came not from his greatest victory but from his first wound.

Put it in order

Which is the right order of these events?

  • Anjana's austerity → Vayu's word → the birth → the leap at the sun → Indra's thunderbolt → Vayu's anger → the boons → the sages' curse
  • The thunderbolt → the leap at the sun → Vayu's anger → the boons
  • The sages' curse → the boons → the thunderbolt → the leap
  • Vayu's word → Anjana's austerity → the boons → the birth
Read the whole story — One life, in a single breath

This whole chapter is really one chain — from an austerity to a curse, with no large pause anywhere in it.

Worth noticing: the wound that made this child Hanuman was followed by boons that made him nearly unbeatable — and that same unbeatability is what earned him the curse that took his memory.

So in a single chapter the child Hanuman is wounded, made unbeatable, and then pays the price of his own unbeatability. The whole gatha afterwards is the story of opening that circle.

Fact

What boons did Brahma and Indra give the child Hanuman?

  • Brahma
  • Brahma
  • Only Indra gave a boon, not Brahma
  • Brahma
Read the whole story — Two boons, one invulnerability

Brahma's boon gives protection from weapons; Indra's leaves death to Hanuman's own will — together they make him nearly unbeatable.

That same invulnerability becomes a problem later in the story — it is why the fearless child causes havoc in the hermitages, and that is where the next curse comes from.

These same boons are what serve in the later kandas of the Ramayana — no weapon in Lanka can hold Hanuman, exactly because of them.