Son of Vāyu

As the despairing searchers sat by the shore preparing to die, their loud lamentations, and in particular the name of Jaṭāyu spoken among them, drew the attention of a great old bird who dwelt nearby, and he came to them, and he was Sampāti, and he was the elder brother of Jaṭāyu, and his coming was the first of the two wonders that saved the search.

Sampāti was an ancient vulture, huge and aged, and he had lost his wings long ago, in his youth, when he and his brother Jaṭāyu had flown too near the sun and Sampāti, shielding his younger brother from the burning heat with his own body, had had his wings scorched away, and had fallen to earth, and had lived ever since, wingless, upon that shore.

He heard the vānaras speaking of Jaṭāyu, and he came to them eager for news of his brother, and they told him, sorrowfully, of Jaṭāyu’s death, of how the old bird had fought Rāvaṇa to save Sītā and been slain for it. And Sampāti grieved for his brother, but he was proud, too, that Jaṭāyu had died so nobly, in so good a cause, and out of gratitude for the news and admiration for his brother’s sacrifice, he resolved to help the searchers with the one thing he could give them, which was knowledge.

For Sampāti, though wingless, had the far sight of the great birds, a vision that could see across enormous distances, and he had, moreover, seen the very thing they sought. I have seen her, he told them. With my far sight I have seen, across the sea, in the golden city of Lankā, in a grove of ashoka trees, a woman held captive, grieving, guarded by demons, and by all you have told me she can be no other than your Sītā. She is there, across this ocean, in Lankā, the city of Rāvaṇa, held in the Ashokavana.

I have seen her with my own far- seeing eyes. There is your goal; there is the captive you seek; she lives, and she is there, across the water.

This was the breakthrough, the thing the whole long search had been for: certain knowledge of where Sītā was. Sampāti’s far sight had accomplished what all the searching of the vānara hosts had not; he had located Sītā precisely, named her prison, confirmed that she lived. The despair of the shore lifted; the search had succeeded; they knew now where she was.

And there is a fitness, the tellers note, in the two brothers, Jaṭāyu and Sampāti, bracketing the search: Jaṭāyu at the beginning, whose dying words told Rāma who had taken Sītā and in what direction; Sampāti at the end, whose far sight told the searchers exactly where she had been carried. The two old birds, brothers, each gave the crucial knowledge at the crucial moment, and between them they framed the whole finding of Sītā, so that the search that began with one brother’s dying testimony was completed by the other brother’s living sight.

But knowing where Sītā was and reaching her were two different things, for the ocean still lay between, a hundred leagues of open sea, and no vānara could cross it. They knew now that Sītā was in Lankā; but Lankā was across that impassable water; and knowledge without the power to act on it is only a sharper kind of helplessness. The searchers looked at the vast sea and despaired anew, for which of them could leap a hundred leagues of ocean?

They tried to reckon it among themselves, each naming how far he could leap, and the answers fell pitifully short; the greatest leapers among them could manage but a fraction of the distance; not one could cross that sea; and it seemed that they had found Sītā only to be stopped forever at the water’s edge, able to see her prison in their minds and utterly unable to reach it.

And here occurred the second wonder, the rousing of Hanumān, and it is one of the most beloved moments in the whole epic, for it is the moment when the greatest of the vānaras discovered, or rather was reminded of, what he truly was.

For Hanumān had sat silent through all this reckoning of leaps, not naming his own power, and this was because Hanumān did not know his own power, or had forgotten it.

There is a story behind this forgetting: that Hanumān, as a child, had been so mighty and so mischievous, his strength so boundless and so dangerous in one who did not know how to govern it, that the sages had laid upon him a kind of forgetting, a veil upon his own knowledge of his powers, so that he would not know his full strength until the moment came when he needed it and was reminded of it.

And so Hanumān had gone through his life not knowing what he truly was, this greatest of beings walking humbly among the others, his boundless power sleeping within him, hidden even from himself.

And now the wise old bear Jāmbavān, who was ancient and knew many things, saw that the moment had come, and he went to Hanumān, and he roused him. Why do you sit silent, Hanumān, he said, as though this task were beyond you? Do you not know what you are? Do you not know your own birth and your own power? You are the son of Vāyu, the wind-god himself; the wind is your father; and there is no distance you cannot cross, no leap beyond your power, for the strength of the wind is in you, boundless, and you have only forgotten it.

Remember yourself, son of the wind. Remember what you are. This sea is nothing to you; this hundred leagues is a stride for you; you alone of all of us can make this crossing, for you alone are the child of the wind and heir to his boundless power. Rise, and remember, and grow, and leap, and carry the hope of us all across the sea to Lankā and to Sītā.

And as Jāmbavān spoke, the veil lifted, and Hanumān remembered. The knowledge of his own nature came back to him, the memory of his divine birth and his boundless power, and with the knowledge came the power itself, waking in him, swelling, rising. And Hanumān began to grow.

Before the astonished eyes of the whole search party, the humble vānara who had sat silent among them began to expand, to swell, to increase, growing vaster and vaster, his form enlarging until he was a giant, a colossus, a mountain of a being, his strength blazing up in him as he remembered at last the full truth of what he was: the son of the wind, mightiest of the mighty, able to leap oceans and shake mountains, the one being in all the search who could do the impossible thing that now had to be done.

There is a deep meaning in this, and the tellers dwell on it, for the rousing of Hanumān is a parable of something true about all of us, in smaller measure. Hanumān had the power all along; it was in him from his birth; but he did not know it, and because he did not know it, he could not use it, and he sat helpless among the helpless while the very power that could save them all slept forgotten within him.

And it took another, a wise friend who saw what Hanumān could not see in himself, to remind him of his own greatness, to call him to remember what he was, and only then could the sleeping power wake and act. How many of us carry within us more than we know, powers and capacities we have forgotten or never recognized, that wait only for the moment of need and the friend who will remind us who we are?

The rousing of Hanumān tells us that our own strength may be greater than we believe, that we may be capable of far more than we have ever attempted, and that sometimes what we need is not new power but the remembering of the power we already have, and a friend wise enough to call it forth. Hanumān grew great when he remembered he was great; and the remembering was itself the beginning of the greatness.

So Hanumān stood upon the shore, grown to his full colossal stature, the son of the wind remembered and awake at last, gazing across the hundred leagues of ocean toward Lankā and toward Sītā, gathering himself for the mightiest leap the world had ever seen. The search had found its goal; the goal was across the sea; and here, at last, was the one being who could cross it.

The Kishkindhā Kāṇḍa ends here, on the shore, with Hanumān poised to leap, and everything that follows, the whole triumphant flight of faith that is the Sundara Kāṇḍa, begins with this: the son of the wind, remembering his power, rising to carry the hope of Rāma across the impassable sea. · · ·