The Search Begins

The vānara hosts assembled, a multitude beyond counting, gathered from every mountain and forest of the world, and Sugrīva divided them into four great search parties and sent them forth in the four directions, north and south, east and west, to search the whole earth for Sītā.

To each party he gave a time, a term within which they must return, and detailed instructions of the lands they were to search, for Sugrīva, who had wandered the whole world as a hunted exile, knew its far countries better than any, and he described to each party the regions it was to explore, the mountains and rivers and hidden places, with a knowledge that astonished those who heard it.

But it was upon the southern party that the whole hope of the search rested, though none of them yet knew it, for it was to the south that Rāvaṇa had carried Sītā, and it was the southern party that would find her trail.

And Sugrīva, whether by wisdom or by some prompting of destiny, put into that southern party his very best: Angada, the young crown prince, Vāli’s son, as its nominal leader; the wise old bear Jāmbavān, ancient and full of counsel; and, above all, Hanumān, the son of the wind, in whom, though few yet knew it, lay the power to accomplish what no other could.

Rāma, sensing something, or trusting Hanumān above all the others, gave to Hanumān a token, his signet ring, to carry, so that if Hanumān should find Sītā, he might show her the ring and she would know him for a true messenger of Rāma. It was to Hanumān that Rāma entrusted his ring, and there is a fitness in it, for it was Hanumān who would need it.

The southern party set out, and searched, and their search was long and hard and for a great while fruitless. They ranged across the southern lands, through forests and over mountains, searching everywhere, finding nothing, and the term Sugrīva had given them began to run short, and despair began to creep upon them, for to return without having found Sītā, and moreover to return after the appointed time, was to face Sugrīva’s anger and to have failed the whole great cause.

And in the midst of their searching, they met with an adventure that the tellers preserve and that Vishṇu Sreenivas had passed over in his condensed telling, but that belongs to the fullness of the tale, and is restored here: the adventure of the enchanted cave and the ascetic woman Swayamprabhā.

For the southern party, wandering in their search, came upon a great cave in the mountains, and being weary and thirsty, and seeing signs that water might lie within, they entered it.

And the cave was no ordinary cave; it was vast, and it was dark, and it wound on and on into the mountain, deeper and deeper, until the searchers were lost in its endless windings, groping in a darkness that seemed to have no end, and they feared that they had trapped themselves, that they would wander in that lightless labyrinth until they died, and that their search and their lives would end together in the belly of the mountain.

But as they groped on in despair, they saw at last a light ahead, and following it they came into a wondrous place, a whole hidden world within the mountain, a magical realm of light and beauty, with gardens and pools and golden palaces, lit as if by its own sun, a paradise concealed in the heart of the rock. It was a marvel beyond anything they had seen, and they wandered through it in astonishment, and at its heart they found its keeper: an ascetic woman, aged, radiant, of great spiritual power, seated in devotion.

Her name was Swayamprabhā, and she guarded this hidden realm, which had been made long ago by a celestial architect and left in her keeping.

The vānaras were afraid, and hungry, and lost, and she received them with kindness. She fed them, for the enchanted realm held fruit and water in abundance, and she let them rest and recover their strength, and she asked them their story, and they told her: of Rāma, and of stolen Sītā, and of their search, and of how they had blundered into the cave and lost themselves in its darkness and feared they would never find their way out to complete their task.

And Swayamprabhā, moved by their story and their plight, resolved to help them, and she did a thing that only her great spiritual power could do. Close your eyes, she told them; and when they had closed their eyes, by her yogic power, in an instant, she transported the whole party out of the enchanted cave and set them down upon the shore of the southern sea, far away, at the very edge of the ocean, exactly where they needed to be to continue their search.

They opened their eyes and found themselves out of the mountain, out of the darkness, delivered by her grace to the seashore, their strength restored, their way clear, saved from the labyrinth that would have been their tomb.

There is a grace in this small restored episode, and it is worth marking, for it belongs to the pattern of the whole story: that the searchers, lost and despairing in the darkness, were saved not by their own strength but by an unlooked-for kindness, by the grace of a holy being who fed them and delivered them and set them on their way.

Again and again in this tale, help comes from unexpected quarters, from a hunter-chief, a dying bird, an old tribal woman, and now an ascetic hermit-woman in a hidden cave; and again and again it is the humble and the holy, off the great road of the mighty, who give the crucial aid. Swayamprabhā asked nothing, gained nothing, and gave everything the searchers needed, and vanished from the story as quietly as she had entered it, one more of the many quiet helpers whose small graces, added together, make the great victory possible.

The search for Sītā was not the work of Rāma alone, nor of the vānara armies alone, but of a whole chain of kindnesses, humble and often unremembered, and Swayamprabhā’s deliverance of the lost searchers is one link in that long chain of grace.

But the searchers, delivered to the seashore, now faced a new despair, and a worse one. For they had been set down at the edge of the ocean, and beyond the ocean, they now understood, must lie Lankā and Sītā, but the ocean was vast, a hundred leagues of open sea, and no vānara among them could cross it.

And worse, the term Sugrīva had given them had now expired; they had spent too long in their wandering and their adventure in the cave; they had passed the appointed time; and they had not found Sītā, only reached the shore of the sea that barred them from her. To return now was to return late and empty- handed, to face Sugrīva’s wrath and to have failed; to go on was impossible, for the sea could not be crossed.

Trapped between an impossible ocean and an angry king, their term expired and their goal beyond their reach, the southern party sank into the deepest despair of the whole search, and some of them resolved that they would not return at all, that they would rather fast to death there on the shore than go back as failures, and they prepared themselves to die by the edge of the sea that had defeated them.

And it was in that extremity, at the very bottom of their despair, on the shore of the impassable ocean, that the two things happened that would turn the whole story: the coming of a great bird with knowledge of Sītā, and the rousing, at last, of the sleeping power of Hanumān.