Ram Rajya: The Friends Depart, Hanuman Stays

A few days after the coronation, sages came from every direction to bless Ram. Agastya was among them. Ram seated them on seats of gold.

The sages said, "Ram, it is a great thing that you killed Ravana. But it is a greater thing that Lakshmana killed Indrajit. Not even the gods could have killed him."

Ram was surprised. "Why do you praise Indrajit rather than Kumbhakarna and Ravana?" Then Agastya told the whole history of the rakshasa line: the sage Pulastya, his son Vishrava, and Vishrava's sons Kubera and Ravana. How Ravana won boons through austerity; how he took Lanka and the Pushpaka from Kubera; how he tried to lift Mount Kailasa and Shiva pressed it down with a toe, so that his scream gave him the name Ravana, "he who makes the worlds cry". How he conquered the gods, and how curse after curse fell on him.

Hanuman's childhood

Then Ram asked, "Sage, something is on my mind. Vali and Ravana were strong, but I think neither could equal Hanuman in strength. To leap the ocean, burn Lanka, carry a mountain: neither Death nor Indra could do such things. Then when Vali drove out Sugriva, why did Hanuman not burn Vali to ash? Did he not know his own strength?"

Agastya smiled. "He truly did not." And he told the story. The child Hanuman had leapt at the rising sun, taking it for a fruit, had been struck by Indra's thunderbolt, and had then received boons from the gods. Made bold by those boons, the mischievous boy ran wild in the hermitages of the sages, breaking one man's water pot and tearing another's bark cloth. The sages were not angry; they laid on him only this curse: "You will forget your strength. It will return only when someone reminds you." That is why Jambavan had to remind him on the seashore.

The farewell

The days went by. One day Ram said to his friends, "Go back now to your own kingdoms. A people should not be long without its king."

He embraced Sugriva. "Keep Angada as a son." To Vibhishana he said, "Rule Lanka by dharma." He called each vanara by name and sent him off with garments and ornaments. The vanaras wept as if life were leaving their bodies.

Hanuman's boon

Last of all Hanuman came forward and stood with folded hands. "Lord, I want nothing. Grant me only one boon. Let my love remain always in you and my devotion never waver. As long as your story is told on this earth, let there be life in my body. Hearing your story again and again, I will be able to bear being parted from you."

Ram rose from the throne and embraced him. "So it shall be. As long as my story remains in the world, your fame will remain and there will be life in your body. And Hanuman, for each one of the services you have done me I could give my life, and still be in your debt for the rest. I want those services to grow old within me. May the chance to repay you never come, for a debt is repaid only to one who has fallen into trouble."

Ram took from his own neck a garland bright as the moon and placed it on Hanuman.

That is why it is said that wherever the story of Ram is told, Hanuman sits there with folded hands and eyes full of tears.

The kingdom

Then Ram gave himself to his work. Every morning he sat in the assembly and attended to his people's affairs. One day Bharata said, "Brother, in your kingdom not only people but beasts and birds are happy. Even the old do not die, women bear children without pain, and the clouds send down water like nectar in season." Ram was glad to hear it, but he said, "Bharata, a king should ask every day what people in the city and the villages are saying about him."

It is from that question that the rest of the story comes.