The Tidings Conveyed

The search party came before Rāma, and Hanumān came forward to deliver his news, and the moment of the delivering is one of the tenderest in the whole epic, for it ended the longest and deepest of Rāma’s griefs, and it did so through the simplest of gestures.

Hanumān did not begin with a long report. He knew what Rāma most needed to hear, and he said it first, in the fewest words, the words that would lift the whole weight of grief from his master’s heart in a single instant. Sītā has been found, he said. She is seen. She lives. Across the ocean, in Lankā, in the Ashokavana of Rāvaṇa, I have found her and seen her and spoken with her, and she lives, and she keeps faith, and she waits for you.

And then, to prove it beyond any possibility of doubt, before Rāma could even fully absorb the words, Hanumān brought out the token, the Chūḍāmaṇi, Sītā’s own crest- jewel, and placed it in Rāma’s hands.

And Rāma took the jewel, and knew it, and the knowledge broke over him like a wave. Here was Sītā’s own ornament, the jewel from her own hair, that he knew, that no one could have counterfeited, the very thing she had worn; and it was warm, as it were, from her hand, carried across the ocean from the living captive to her grieving husband, the proof of everything: that she lived, that she was found, that she had kept faith, that she had sent this token of her love and her fidelity across all that distance to him.

Rāma held the little jewel in his hands, and pressed it to his eyes, and to his heart, and wept, and his weeping now was not the weeping of the long grief that had nearly destroyed him but the weeping of a grief transformed at last into hope, of a longing that at last had an answer, of a love that had feared everything and now knew that the beloved lived and waited.

Let us feel the fullness of this moment, for the whole long agony of the story since the abduction has been building toward it. Since the empty cottage, since the wild grief in the forest, since the long search, Rāma has carried the terrible weight of not-knowing: whether Sītā lived, whether she suffered, whether she could ever be found, whether all his labour and longing were spent upon a captive already dead or lost beyond recovery. And now, in a single instant, through a few words and a small jewel, that whole weight was lifted. Sītā lived.

Sītā was found. Sītā kept faith and waited. The not-knowing was over; the grief had an object and the object was recoverable; the long night of pure loss had ended in the certain dawn of hope. And the little jewel in his hands, warm with all it meant, was the sign and the seal of it, the touch of his living wife reaching him across the ocean, and Rāma wept over it with a joy that all his composure could not contain and that he did not try to contain, for this was joy that had earned its tears.

And when the first flood of it had passed, Rāma turned to Hanumān, and his gratitude to the faithful servant who had brought him this was beyond his power to express, and the tellers dwell on it, for the bond between Rāma and Hanumān is one of the most beautiful things in all the tale. Rāma embraced Hanumān, and he tried to thank him, and he found that he could not, that there was no reward, no gift, no honour equal to what Hanumān had done. What can I give you, he said in effect, that could ever match this service?

You have crossed the impassable ocean; you have entered the enemy’s fortress; you have found my Sītā when I had begun to despair of finding her; you have comforted her and given her hope and brought me the certain knowledge that she lives; you have done what no other being in all the worlds could have done, and you have done it out of pure devotion, asking nothing. There is no reward that can equal such a deed. I have nothing to give you that is worthy of it.

I can only give you my embrace, and my love, and my eternal gratitude, and the knowledge that as long as this story is told, your name will be joined to mine, and you will be honoured wherever I am honoured, for you have given me back my life.

And Rāma embraced Hanumān as a brother, as a dearest friend, as one whose service had passed beyond the possibility of repayment into the realm of pure love, and the bond between them was sealed in that embrace, the bond of the perfect Lord and the perfect devotee, which is the very heart of what this story has to teach about love and service and devotion.

There is a deep truth in Rāma’s inability to reward Hanumān, and the tellers mean us to see it. For the highest service, the service given out of pure love, cannot be repaid, because it was never given for a reward; it stands outside the whole economy of giving and getting; it can only be met with love, with gratitude, with the recognition that here is something beyond price.

Hanumān had not served Rāma for any reward; he had served out of pure devotion, for the joy of serving, for the love of the one he served; and such service can only be honoured, never repaid, for to repay it would be to reduce it to a transaction, and it was never a transaction but a gift of the whole self. Rāma understood this, and so he did not insult Hanumān’s devotion by offering a reward equal to it, for there was none; he offered instead the only fit response to such love, which is love, and gratitude, and the eternal bond of friendship.

And in that response, the perfect devotion of Hanumān met the perfect love of Rāma, and the two were joined forever, and the tellers hold up their bond as the very model and ideal of what the love between the devotee and the divine can be.

So the tidings were conveyed, and Rāma’s long grief was ended, and his love and gratitude poured out upon the faithful Hanumān, and the whole weight of the story shifted now from sorrow toward action, from the finding of Sītā toward the winning of her.

For now Rāma knew where she was, and knew she lived, and knew that the enemy’s city, for all its might, could be entered and burned; and there remained only to gather the army, and cross the ocean, and make war upon Lankā, and destroy Rāvaṇa, and take Sītā back with honour, exactly as she had said it must be done.

The grief was over; the war was beginning; and the great host of the vānaras, with Rāma and Lakshmaṇa at its head and Hanumān and Sugrīva and all the mighty leaders of the monkey-people beside them, turned now toward the south, toward the sea, toward the golden city across the water, and the last and greatest movement of the story began.