The Ramayana · 337 of 493

Kiṣkindhā Kānda (The Book of Kishkindha): Canto 67 — Hanumán’s Speech

Soon as his stature they beheld, Their fear and sorrow were dispelled; And joyous praises loud and long Rang out from all the Vánar throng. On the great chief their eyes they bent In rapture and astonishment, As, when his conquering foot he raised, The Gods upon Náráyaṇ(785) gazed. He stood amid the joyous crowd, Bent to the chiefs, and cried aloud: “The Wind-God, Fire’s eternal friend, Whose blasts the mountain summits rend, With boundless force that none may stay, Takes where he lists his viewless way. Sprung from that glorious father, I In power and speed with him may vie, A thousand times with airy leap Can circle loftiest Meru’s steep: With my fierce arms can stir the sea Till from their bed the waters flee And rush at my command to drown This land with grove and tower and town. I through the fields of air can spring Far swifter than the feathered King, And leap before him as he flies, On sounding pinions through the skies. I can pursue the Lord of Light Uprising from the eastern height, And reach him ere his course be sped With burning beams engarlanded. I will dry up the mighty main, Shatter the rocks and rend the plain. O’er earth and ocean will I bound, And every flower that grows on ground, And bloom of climbing plants shall show Strewn on the ground, the way I go, Bright as the lustrous path that lies Athwart the region of the skies.(786) The Maithil lady will I find,— Thus speaks mine own prophetic mind,— And cast in hideous ruin down The shattered walls of Lanká’s town.”

Still on the chief in rapt surprise The Vánar legions bent their eyes, And thus again sage Jámbaván Addressed the glorious Hanumán: “Son of the Wind, thy promise cheers The Vánars’ hearts, and calms their fears, Who, rescued from their dire distress, With prospering vows thy way will bless. The holy saints their favour lend, And all our chiefs the deed commend Urging thee forward on thy way: Arise then, and the task assay. Thou art our only refuge; we, Our lives and all, depend on thee.”

Insight

Hanumān, his memory restored, stands and tells the monkey army what he can do. He can leap the sea. He can chase the sun. He can dry up the ocean if he chooses. The Kāṇḍa ends with him climbing Mount Mahendra, the launch-point, and the mountain rocking under his weight as elephants and lions flee his shadow. The Sundara Kāṇḍa, which siblings of this commentary will handle, opens with his leap. What needs to be felt here is the structural arc: we began the Kāṇḍa with two devastated princes grieving by Lake Pampā, and we end it with the strongest figure in the epic poised to cross the impossible water. Between those two images sits the entire moral story of the book: the ethics of the Vālī killing, the costs paid by Tārā and Sugrīva, the wisdom of Hanumān's patient ministering. Vālmīki has built it as a single curve from despair to flight.Goldman ed., Kiṣkindhākāṇḍa, intro overview pp. 14-44; on the closing-flight as structural pivot: Sheldon Pollock, intro to Araṇyakāṇḍa (1991).

Then sprang the Wind-God’s son the best Of Vánars, on Mahendra’s crest, And the great mountain rocked and swayed By that unusual weight dismayed, As reels an elephant beneath The lion’s spring and rending teeth. The shady wood that crowned him shook, The trembling birds the boughs forsook, And ape and pard and lion fled From brake and lair disquieted.