The Search in Lankā

Hanumān stood upon the mountain at the ocean’s edge, grown to his colossal stature, and gathered himself for the leap. He pressed down upon the mountain with his feet until the very rock groaned and sank beneath the force of his crouching, and then he sprang, and launched himself out over the sea, a hundred leagues of open water, flying through the air like a mountain hurled from a sling, like the very wind that was his father, streaking southward toward Lankā.

It was a leap such as the world had never seen, and it is the leap that gives the whole Sundara Kāṇḍa its character, for this is the book of faith in flight, of devotion made mighty, of the impossible attempted and achieved out of pure love and loyalty.

And the leap was not unopposed, for the sea and its powers tested him as he flew, and the tellers give us three trials in the crossing, each with its own meaning.

First rose Mainaka, a golden mountain that dwelt beneath the sea, and Mainaka rose up out of the waters into Hanumān’s path, but not to bar him; rather, out of kindness, to offer him rest. The ocean had bid the mountain rise so that Hanumān, wearied by his great flight, might alight upon its golden peak and rest a while before going on. It was a gracious offer, and it would have been sweet to accept, but Hanumān would not.

He touched the mountain lightly in courtesy, in acknowledgment of its kindness, but he did not stop, for he would not rest, would not pause, would not delay his errand for a moment while Sītā suffered and Rāma grieved. There is no rest, he said in effect, until the work is done. And he flew on. This is the first lesson of the crossing: that the servant of a great cause does not pause for his own ease, however kindly offered, while the work remains undone; that true devotion does not rest halfway.

Then came Surasā, a great sea-serpent, a demoness of the deep, and she rose to test him in another way, for she opened her vast mouth across his path and declared that he must pass through her jaws, that it was her boon that none should cross without entering her mouth. Here was not kindness but obstacle, and Hanumān met it not with force but with wit.

He grew larger, and she grew larger to match him, widening her mouth; and he grew larger still, and she larger still; and then, suddenly, Hanumān shrank himself to a tiny size, darted into her open mouth and out again before she could close it, and so fulfilled the letter of her boon, having entered her mouth, without being caught by it. Surasā, satisfied and impressed, blessed him and let him pass.

This is the second lesson: that not every obstacle is best met by force, that cleverness and quickness may accomplish what mere strength cannot, and that the wise servant knows when to grow great and when to grow small.

Then came Simhikā, a demoness who caught her prey by seizing its shadow upon the water and dragging it down, and she caught Hanumān’s shadow as he flew and began to drag him toward her to devour him. But Hanumān perceived the trick, and this one he met with force, for it was pure malice and admitted no other answer; he let her draw him toward her mouth, and then, growing suddenly, he tore into her and destroyed her from within, and flew on.

This is the third lesson: that some evils are met neither with courtesy nor with cleverness but must simply be destroyed, and that the wise servant knows this too, and does not shrink from it when the moment calls.

So Hanumān crossed the sea, refusing rest, outwitting the obstacle, destroying the malice, and came at last to the far shore, to Lankā, and alighted upon its mountains, and looked down upon the golden city of the enemy.

And it was a formidable sight. Lankā was a fortress as much as a city, ringed with walls, watched by guards, its gates strong, its streets patrolled, a citadel of the demon power heavily guarded against exactly the kind of intrusion Hanumān now intended. To search it, Hanumān would have to enter it secretly, for a single vānara, however mighty, could not fight the whole host of Lankā at once, and his errand was to find Sītā, not to give battle.

So Hanumān shrank himself down to a small size, the size of a cat, and waited for the cover of night, and under darkness he slipped toward the city to enter it unseen.

But even so he was challenged, for the city itself had a guardian spirit, Lankinī, the presiding deity of the fortress, and she saw the small intruding shape and rose to bar him at the gate, demanding to know who dared enter Lankā by stealth. And Hanumān struck her, a single blow, and it felled her, and in her falling she remembered an old prophecy: that when a vānara should overcome her, the doom of Lankā was at hand, for her defeat was the omen of the city’s fall.

She let Hanumān pass, knowing that her overthrow was the sign that the end of Rāvaṇa’s golden city had begun. So Hanumān entered Lankā, and the very entering was an omen of its ruin, the first small crack in the fortress that would one day be brought wholly down.

And then began the long search through the city by night, and the tellers dwell on it, for it is a strange and vivid passage. Hanumān, tiny, unseen, crept through the sleeping city, through its streets and its gardens, and into its palaces, searching everywhere for Sītā. He passed through the great mansions of the demon lords, through halls of gold and chambers of luxury, searching room by room, for he did not know where in all that vast city the captive might be held.

He came into Rāvaṇa’s own palace, the greatest of all, and searched through its splendours, through chamber after chamber of sleeping demons and heaped treasure and every kind of magnificence, looking always for the one face he sought.

And here the tellers give us a moment of great psychological delicacy, a moment that shows the fineness of Hanumān’s own soul. For in his search through Rāvaṇa’s palace, Hanumān came into the inner apartments where Rāvaṇa slept among his queens, and there he saw the demon king asleep, and around him his many wives, women of great beauty, and among them the chief queen, Mandodarī, whose beauty was such that for a single moment Hanumān’s heart leapt, thinking: can this be Sītā? Have I found her?

But at once he checked himself, and corrected the thought, and was almost ashamed of it, reasoning: no, this cannot be Sītā; for Sītā, torn from her husband, grieving, faithful, would never be found sleeping peacefully in the luxury of the demon’s palace, adorned and at ease among his queens. The very peace and comfort of the sleeping woman proved she was not Sītā, for Sītā in her captivity and her grief could not possibly be at peace in such a place. And so Hanumān put the thought aside and searched on.

The tellers pause on this small moment because it shows us something true about Hanumān and about the discernment of the pure heart. He had felt, for an instant, the natural response of any eye to great beauty; but he corrected it at once, not by any rule imposed from without, but by his own understanding of what Sītā was, of what faithfulness and grief would look like, of the difference between the ease of the demon’s queen and the sorrow of the captive wife.

His very love for Rāma, his understanding of Sītā’s devotion, told him that the beautiful sleeping woman could not be the one he sought, for Sītā’s whole being would be turned toward Rāma in grief, not sunk in the comfort of the enemy. It is the discernment of one who understands the heart he serves, and it kept Hanumān from error where a coarser searcher might have been deceived.

But nowhere in all the palace, nowhere in all the searched mansions of the great city, did Hanumān find Sītā, and as the night wore on toward its end his heart began to fail him, for he had searched so much and found nothing, and he feared that his whole great crossing might be in vain, that Sītā might be dead, or hidden where he could not find her, or not in Lankā at all. He had leapt the ocean and entered the fortress and searched the palaces, and still he had not found her, and despair crept toward him as the night thinned toward dawn.

But he had not yet searched everywhere; there was still one place he had not looked, a grove apart from the palaces, a garden of ashoka trees within the palace grounds; and it was there, as the search seemed about to fail, that Hanumān would at last find what he had crossed the sea to seek.