The Ramayana · 385 of 493

Sundara Kānda (The Beautiful Book): Canto 53 — The Punishment

King Rávaṇ, by his pleading moved, The counsel of the chief approved: “Thy words are wise and true: to kill An envoy would beseem us ill. Yet must we for his crime invent Some fitting mode of punishment. The tail, I fancy, is the part Most cherished by a monkey’s heart. Make ready: set his tail aflame, And let him leave us as he came, And thus disfigured and disgraced Back to his king and people haste.”

The giants heard their monarch’s speech; And, filled with burning fury, each Brought strips of cotton cloth, and round The monkey’s tail the bandage wound. As round his tail the bands they drew His mighty form dilating grew Vast as the flame that bursts on high Where trees are old and grass is dry. Each band and strip they soaked in oil, And set on fire the twisted coil. Delighted as they viewed the blaze, The cruel demons stood at gaze: And mid loud drums and shells rang out The triumph of their joyful shout. They pressed about him thick and fast As through the crowded streets he passed, Observing with attentive care Each rich and wondrous structure there, Still heedless of the eager cry That rent the air, The spy! the spy!

Some to the captive lady ran, And thus in joyous words began: “That copper-visaged monkey, he Who in the garden talked with thee, Through Lanká’s town is led a show, And round his tail the red flames glow.” The mournful news the lady heard That with fresh grief her bosom stirred. Swift to the kindled fire she went And prayed before it reverent: “If I my husband have obeyed, And kept the ascetic vows I made, Free, ever free, from stain and blot, O spare the Vánar; harm him not.”

Insight

While Hanumān is being paraded through Laṅkā with his tail burning, Sītā in her grove prays to the fire god to spare him. The detail is tender and easy to miss. She is the one in captivity, with weeks to live, and yet her first impulse on hearing of Hanumān's torture is to pray that he be unharmed. The fire god responds; Hanumān feels no heat. Bhakti tradition reads the moment as a small but decisive theological statement: the love between Rāma's servants and Rāma's wife is already operating like grace, protecting at a distance, even before the rescue itself begins. The Christian tradition of the prayers of the saints, in which the holy ones in heaven are pictured as already interceding for those still in the struggle, is reaching for a structurally similar idea. Love among those who belong to the same beloved bends physics.Revelation 5:8 on the prayers of the saints as incense before the throne; on Sītā's intercessory prayer at the burning, Lutgendorf, Hanuman's Tale, ch. 5.

Then leapt on high the flickering flame And shone in answer to the dame. The pitying fire its rage forbore: The Vánar felt the heat no more. Then, to minutest size reduced, The bonds that bound his limbs he loosed, And, freed from every band and chain, Rose to his native size again. He seized a club of ponderous weight That lay before him by the gate, Rushed at the fiends that hemmed him round, And laid them lifeless on the ground. Through Lanká’s town again he strode, And viewed each street and square and road,— Still wreathed about with harmless blaze, A sun engarlanded with rays.