The Leap to Lanka

The search party sat on the southern shore and looked at a hundred yojanas of sea. Somewhere beyond it was Lanka, and in Lanka, the vulture Sampati had told them, was Sita.

"I could jump twenty," said one monkey. "I could jump fifty," said another. Nobody could jump a hundred.

The old bear Jambavan turned to Hanuman, who had said nothing.

"Why are you sitting there?" he said. "You are the Wind's son. You leapt at the sun when you were a baby. You have only forgotten what you are."

Hanuman stood up, and as he remembered, he grew. He climbed the Mahendra mountain, pressed it down under his feet until the rocks split, and leapt.

In the middle of the sea the mountain Mainaka rose out of the water to offer him a rest. Hanuman touched it with his hand, thanked it, and flew on. Then Surasa, the mother of serpents, rose up in front of him with her mouth open.

"The gods have given you to me to eat," she said.

Hanuman made himself bigger, and she opened her mouth wider. He made himself bigger again, and she opened it wider still. Then he made himself as small as a thumb, darted into her mouth and out again before it could close, and bowed to her. She laughed and let him go. Further on a demoness, Simhika, caught hold of his shadow on the water and dragged him down towards her jaws. He went in, and tore her apart from inside.

He came down on the shore of Lanka at dusk, made himself the size of a cat, and went into the city by night.

He searched every house. He searched Ravana's palace, among his sleeping women, and once he saw a beautiful queen asleep on a couch and thought for a moment that it was Sita, and then knew that Sita would not be sleeping here. At last, in a grove of ashoka trees, he found a thin woman in one dirty yellow cloth, sitting on the ground among demon guards, and he climbed into the tree above her and waited.

Ravana came at dawn and gave her two more months to give in. When he had gone, one of the guards, Trijata, told the others of a dream in which Rama came for her and Lanka burned.

When the guards were dozing Hanuman began, very softly, to tell the story of Rama from the tree. Sita looked up.

"Who are you?" she said.

He came down and gave her Rama's ring. She held it to her face. In return she gave him the jewel from her hair, for Rama to know her by. He offered to carry her home on his back that same day, and she refused.

"Rama must come for me himself," she said.

In Tulsidas's telling the city has a guardian, a demoness called Lankini, who stops the little monkey at the gate.

"Where do you think you are going?" she says. "Thieves are my food."

Hanuman hits her once with his fist and she falls, coughing blood. When she gets up she folds her hands. Brahma told her long ago, she says, that when a monkey knocked her down Lanka's end would be near.

Then Hanuman, searching Lanka, comes on one house with the bow of Rama painted on it and a tulsi plant growing in the courtyard. Inside a man wakes chanting Rama's name. It is Vibhishana, Ravana's brother.

The two of them talk like friends. Vibhishana tells Hanuman where Sita is kept and how to reach her.

In the ashoka grove Hanuman lets Rama's ring drop from the tree into her lap. She knows it, and is afraid of it: how could it be here, unless he is dead, unless it is one of Ravana's tricks?

So Hanuman sings Rama's praises from among the leaves until she is sure, and then comes down, very small, and folds his hands.

"Mother," he says, "I am Rama's messenger."

She looks at the little monkey and wonders how he can ever fight demons, and he shows her, for a moment, a body as tall as a golden mountain. Then he shrinks back.

"I am hungry," he says. "May I eat the fruit in your garden?"

She blesses him and says yes. He eats, and then he pulls the garden to pieces, and when they catch him and set his tail on fire, he burns their city with it.