Hanumanहनुमान

Hanuman is the son of the wind, a vanara of extraordinary strength, and the central devotee of the Ramayana. He is worshipped across India in more shrines than almost any other deity — at crossroads, under trees, at the entrances of towns, beside every Rama temple, and in vast temples of his own.

What distinguishes him is that he is venerated for his devotion rather than his power, although he has a great deal of both. He is the tradition's fullest picture of dasya bhava — the relationship with the divine understood as service — and his image, kneeling with hands joined before Rama or tearing open his chest to show Rama and Sita within it, is the standard Hindu emblem of what wholehearted attachment looks like.

The names he goes by

Almost every name is a relationship or a scar.

Hanuman itself is usually read from hanu, the jaw — "one with a disfigured jaw" — after the childhood leap at the sun that Indra ended with a thunderbolt. The tradition's most-used name for him commemorates an injury, not a victory.

• Anjaneya — son of Anjana, his mother. The standard name in the south.
• Maruti — of the Maruts, the winds. The standard name in Maharashtra.
• Vayuputra, Pavanasuta — son of the wind.
• Kesari Nandana — delight of Kesari, his father.
• Bajrangbali — from vajra-aṅga-balī, the strong one whose limbs are hard as the thunderbolt. The name of rural North India.
• Sankata Mochana — remover of distress, and the name under which he is asked for help.
• Mahavira, Mahakaya, Kapishwara — the great hero, the great-bodied, lord of the monkeys.

More worshipped than read about

He is one of the chiranjivi, the immortals, and is held to be present wherever the Ramayana is recited. A seat is traditionally left for him at a recitation.

His worship is notably practical. He is approached for physical courage, for protection from harm and malign influence, for steadiness under pressure, and by wrestlers and students — akhara wrestling grounds across North India keep his image, and Saturday queues at his temples are among the longest in the country.

That combination — enormous devotional reach, comparatively little theological argument — is characteristic. There is no major philosophical school built on Hanuman, and no serious dispute about who he is. What there is instead is the Hanuman Chalisa, forty verses in Awadhi, which is very probably the most recited Hindu devotional text in the world.

In the Valmiki Ramayana

Hanuman enters the record in the Valmiki Ramayana, where the fifth book, the Sundara Kanda, is given over almost entirely to him — his leap across the ocean, the search in Lanka, the meeting with Sita, and the burning of the city. That a whole book of the epic is his is the measure of his importance in the earliest text.

In Valmiki he is a heroic and exceptionally capable vanara, wise and eloquent, but not yet an object of worship in his own right. He is an envoy: the qualities the epic dwells on are his judgement, his memory and his command of speech. When he first addresses Sita he does so carefully, at length, and from a distance, because he has worked out that a strange man appearing in front of a captive woman is a problem.

Whose son he is

His mother is Anjana and his father Kesari; his divine father is Vayu, the wind. Both fatherhoods are held at once rather than reconciled, and the sources then diverge on something larger:

• Most Puranas make him the son, or an aṁśa — a portion — of Vayu. The Garuda Purana calls him a marud-aṁśa, born expressly to assist Rama's descent.
• The Shiva Purana makes him an avatar of Shiva, which is the Shaiva reading and the reason a figure so bound to Rama is also claimed by Shaivism.
• The Madhva tradition of Karnataka identifies him as one of three incarnations of Vayu, alongside Bhima of the Mahabharata and Madhvacharya himself — which is why Hanuman is so prominent in Dvaita Vaishnavism.

None of these is a minority curiosity, and the tradition has never felt the need to settle it. Tulsidas keeps two of them in a single line of the Chalisa: saṅkara suvana kesarīnandana — son of Shankara, delight of Kesari.

The cult that grew afterwards

His independent cult develops much later than the epic, and its expansion is one of the more remarkable movements in Indian religious history: from a supporting character to one of the most worshipped deities in the subcontinent.

The decisive period is roughly the 10th to 17th centuries. He acquires temples, iconography and his own texts. Tulsidas's Hanuman Chalisa (16th century) is the single most recited Hindu devotional text in North India today, and Tulsidas's own Ramcharitmanas gave Hanuman a far larger and more explicitly divine role than Valmiki had. Samartha Ramdas, in 17th-century Maharashtra, established Hanuman temples explicitly as centres of physical training and self-discipline — the tradition the akharas continue.

In the Mahabharata

He appears briefly in the Mahabharata, and the episode is a good one. Bhima, walking through a forest, finds a feeble old monkey lying across his path and orders it to move. It suggests he lift its tail aside instead. Bhima cannot move the tail.

The monkey is Hanuman, and the two are brothers by their shared father, Vayu. He reveals himself and promises to sit on Arjuna's banner at Kurukshetra and to shout there. It is the only place in the epics where his immortality is put to narrative use: the Ramayana's hero turns up, generations later, as an old man in a wood.

Outside the Hindu Ramayanas

The story travelled, and Hanuman changed as it went.

Jain retellings rationalise him — the 8th-century Dhurtakhyana carries an alternative childhood — while the Thai Ramakien does something more startling. Its Phra Hanuman is not celibate. He is a mischievous, conspicuously amorous figure who peers into bedrooms on his first night in Lanka, seduces daughters of both Vibhishana and Ravana, marries, and has children. For an Indian audience this is close to unthinkable; in Thailand it is the standard version, transmitted through court performance and a Buddhist moral frame rather than through Sanskrit commentary.

It is worth knowing precisely because the celibacy is treated as fundamental in India. The Ramakien shows that it is a feature of one tradition's Hanuman, held very firmly, rather than a fact about the character everywhere he is told.

Hanuman is depicted as a vanara — usually translated as monkey, though the epic's vanaras are a people, not animals — with a strong human body, a tail, and a face that varies from simian to almost human depending on region and period.

The sindoor

He is most often shown coated in sindoor, the orange-red vermilion paste. The story given for it is that Sita applied sindoor to her parting for Rama's wellbeing, and Hanuman, reasoning that more would be better, covered his whole body in it.

That is the explanation offered, and it is also a fair description of him: the logic is sound, the proportion is absurd, and the motive is unimpeachable. Sindoor mixed with oil remains his standard offering, and many images are layered so thickly that the features beneath have been lost for a century.

What each posture is

His common postures are not decorative variants — each is a specific scene:

• Flying, with the Sanjeevani mountain held above his head.
• Kneeling, palms joined, before Rama.
• Tearing open his chest to reveal Rama and Sita seated within it.
• Carrying Rama and Lakshmana on his shoulders.
• Panchamukhi, five-faced, from the Ahiravana episode.
• Trampling a prone figure, in the Rajasthani Balaji temples, where the reference is to affliction rather than to a named demon.

He carries a gada, the mace, and wears a janeu. In the exile scenes he is unadorned; in the warrior images he is crowned.

The sindoor stone

Roadside shrines frequently show only a sindoor-covered stone with silver eyes. This is a legitimate aniconic form, not an unfinished or a poor man's image — a great many of the most-visited Hanuman shrines in North India are exactly this, and the layering of sindoor over generations is itself the object of devotion. A visitor who reads it as a neglected idol has misread the shrine.

Veer Hanuman is the fierce warrior aspect; Dasa Hanuman the humble servant. Both are common in the same temple.

Veer and Dasa

Veer Hanuman — the warrior, mace raised, worshipped for protection.

Dasa Hanuman — kneeling in service before Rama, the devotional form. The two aspects are the whole character in miniature, and most temples of any size carry both.

Panchamukhi

Panchamukhi Hanuman is five-faced, from a late episode of the Ahiravana narrative, in which Rama and Lakshmana are carried off to the netherworld and five lamps set in five directions must be extinguished at once. Hanuman takes five faces to do it.

The faces are fixed, and each guards a quarter:

An Ekadashamukhi, eleven-faced form, also exists and has its own kavacha, but it is far less common in worship.

The regional names

Bala Hanuman — the child who leapt at the sun mistaking it for fruit.

Sankat Mochan — the remover of difficulties, and the dedication of the well-known Varanasi temple.

Bajrang Bali — the North Indian name, from vajra-anga, thunderbolt-limbed.

Anjaneya — the South Indian name, after his mother Anjana; Maruti in Maharashtra, after Marut, the wind; Balaji in Rajasthan, where the great Hanuman temples carry that name rather than Venkateswara's.

Reaching for the sun

As an infant he leaps at the rising sun, taking it for fruit. Indra strikes him down with the vajra, breaking his jaw — hanu — which the tradition gives as the source of his name. Vayu withdraws the air from the world in grief until the gods restore the child, each with a boon: Indra that his body be as hard as the vajra, Agni that fire not burn him, Varuna that water not harm him, Vayu his own speed.

The Chalisa's eighteenth chaupai returns to this — juga sahasra jojana para bhānū — and is the verse most often misused, as an arithmetic "proof" of the earth–sun distance. It is a comparison, not a measurement.

The forgotten strength

The boons made him unmanageable, so sages laid a curse that he would forget his own power until he was reminded of it. Jambavan reminds him on the shore before the leap to Lanka.

It is the story's own explanation of why capable people need to be told what they are capable of, and it is the single most quoted thing about him outside religious settings.

The Sundara Kanda

He crosses the ocean, searches Lanka, finds Sita in the Ashoka grove, gives her Rama's ring, allows himself to be captured in order to take Ravana's measure, and — when his tail is set alight — burns the city with it.

The detail worth keeping is that the capture is deliberate. He is not caught; he decides that the errand needs an audience with Ravana and arranges one.

The Sanjeevani mountain

Sent for a single herb to revive Lakshmana and unable to identify it among the others, he lifts the entire mountain and carries it back. He is shown airborne with it more often than in any other pose. The reasoning is the same as the sindoor: correct, disproportionate, and effective.

The pearl necklace

Given a necklace after the war, he bites each pearl open, looking for Rama inside. Asked, mockingly, whether Rama is in his own body, he tears open his chest — and Rama and Sita are there.

Ahiravana and the five faces

Ravana's kinsman Ahiravana carries the sleeping Rama and Lakshmana to the netherworld. Hanuman follows, and finds that the goddess guarding the place must be worshipped with five lamps in five directions, extinguished simultaneously. He assumes five faces. The episode is late, absent from Valmiki, and is the origin of the Panchamukhi form.

Bhima's road

Generations later, in the Mahabharata, an old monkey lying across a forest path declines to move and invites Bhima — the strongest man of his age, and his own half-brother — to lift its tail aside. He cannot. It is the epic tradition's way of settling a question nobody had asked.

His days

Tuesday and Saturday are his days, and the queues at his temples on Saturdays are among the longest at any Hindu shrine. Many devotees keep a partial fast on Tuesdays, taking one meal, often without salt.

Hanuman Jayanti falls in Chaitra (March–April) in most of India — on the full moon — but the date is genuinely regional rather than uniform: parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala observe it in Margazhi/Dhanu (December–January), and Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana keep it in other months again. There is no single national date, and sources that give one are describing their own region.

What is recited

The [Hanuman Chalisa](/mantras/hanuman-chalisa) is recited daily by very large numbers of people, often eleven or a hundred and eight times on Tuesdays. The Sundara Kanda is read in full as an observance in its own right, particularly in the south and in times of difficulty. The Bajrang Baan and the Sankatmochan Hanumanashtak are also common.

The shorter verses in daily use are the dhyana shlokas — [Manojavam maruta-tulya-vegam](/mantras/manojavam-maruta-tulya-vegam) and [Atulita baladhamam](/mantras/atulita-baladhamam) before a Sundarkand reading, and [Yatra yatra raghunatha kirtanam](/mantras/yatra-yatra-raghunatha-kirtanam) before a Ramayana recitation. The full set is at Mantras of Hanuman.

What is offered

Sindoor and mustard or sesame oil applied to the image, boondi laddoos, betel leaves, and a garland of flowers. In the Balaji temples of Rajasthan the offerings and rites are different again, and concern affliction and possession.

The akharas

He is the deity of the akhara, the wrestling ground and gymnasium, where his celibacy and discipline — not his strength — are the stated model. Samartha Ramdas's Maharashtra temples were founded on that principle in the 17th century, and the association is unbroken: a great many North Indian akharas still open with his name and keep his image at the head of the pit.

He is also invoked against fear and malign influence, which is among the commonest reasons people come to his shrines at all.

A Rama temple almost always has a Hanuman shrine facing the sanctum. He is worshipped in his own right far more often than any other attendant deity in the tradition.

North

Sankat Mochan, Varanasi — founded by tradition at the spot where Tulsidas is said to have had his vision of Hanuman.

Hanuman Garhi, Ayodhya — the hilltop shrine pilgrims traditionally visit before the Rama temple, on the reasoning that one asks the servant for access to the master.

Salasar Balaji and Mehandipur Balaji, Rajasthan — both drawing very large numbers; the latter known specifically for rites concerning affliction and possession, and unusual among major Hindu shrines in that what happens there is closer to exorcism than to darshan.

Jakhoo Temple, Shimla — on the ridge above the town, at the site local tradition identifies with his search for the Sanjeevani herb.

West

The Maruti temples of Maharashtra, eleven of which are attributed to Samartha Ramdas in the 17th century and were built as training grounds as much as shrines.

South

Anjaneyaswamy shrines across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, many founded in the Madhva tradition, and Anjanadri Hill near Hampi, identified by local tradition as his birthplace.

Namakkal, Tamil Nadu — an eighteen-foot monolithic Hanuman, open to the sky, facing the Narasimha temple across the rock.

Suchindram, Tamil Nadu — a very large Hanuman image within the Thanumalayan temple complex.

The tall images

Colossal Hanuman statues are a distinctly modern development, and there are now a great many. Paritala Anjaneya in Andhra Pradesh is among the tallest, and comparable images have been raised across the south and in Delhi. Their scale is a contemporary devotional idiom rather than a traditional one — worth noting, since they are often assumed to be ancient.

Devotion as service

Hanuman is the tradition's answer to a question devotional religion has to face: what does the ideal relationship with the divine actually look like? The answer he gives is service, and the significance is that service is not presented as lesser. Offered a place beside Rama, he asks instead to remain at his feet. The tradition treats that as the higher choice, not the humbler one.

Strength that is never his own

He also resolves a tension between strength and submission that religious traditions often leave unresolved. He is the strongest figure in the epic, and every use of that strength is on someone else's behalf. Power in the service of devotion is the entire content of the character, which is why he is equally the deity of wrestlers and of frightened people.

There is no episode in which he acts for himself. It is a surprisingly hard thing to write and the reason the character has not dated.

The forgotten strength

The forgotten-strength motif is his most quoted teaching. Hanuman cannot cross the ocean until he is reminded who he is — and then does it without difficulty. The capacity was never absent; only the knowledge of it was. It is a reading of self-doubt that has kept the story useful far outside its religious setting, and it is why he is the deity students are taken to before examinations.

Present tense

His immortality gives him a distinctive place in practice. He is not a deity who acted once in the past but one held to be present, listening, wherever his lord's story is being told — which is why a recitation leaves him a seat, and why the verse recited before a Ramayana reading describes him in the audience with his hands folded and his eyes wet, rather than in the air with a mountain.