The Child Who Leapt for the Sun

Since the Pandavas had heard of the mighty Hanuman - who served the Lord Rama, who leaped across the sea to Lanka, and who was the elder brother of their own Bhima, both being sons of the wind-god - the sages told them the wondrous tale of Hanuman's childhood, and of how he came by both his immense powers and the curse that made him forget them.

Hanuman was born in the mountain country of the vanaras, the forest people, the son of Anjana, a noble apsara-woman in vanara form, and of Vayu, the wind-god himself - and so he was called Vayuputra and Pavanaputra, the son of the wind, and Maruti, the wind-child. From his divine father he had, even as an infant, a strength and a swiftness beyond anything natural, and his birth was marked by the favor of the gods. But the full revealing of his power, and its strange humbling, came on a single morning of his babyhood, when the hungry child mistook the sun for a fruit.

One morning, when the infant Hanuman was hungry and his mother away, he looked up into the sky and saw the sun rising over the mountains - round and red and glowing, low on the horizon. To the hungry baby, the rising sun looked like nothing so much as a great ripe fruit, a red and luscious thing hanging just within reach, ready to be plucked and eaten.

And the child Hanuman, with the boundless appetite and the boundless confidence of a baby who did not yet know what could and could not be done, decided that he would have that bright fruit for his breakfast. He gathered himself, and with the divine strength of the son of the wind, he leaped - bounding up from the earth into the sky, soaring upward with astonishing speed and power, flying up and up toward the sun itself, meaning to seize it and eat it. A baby, leaping to swallow the sun.

Now it happened that on that very day Rahu, the demon of the eclipse, was approaching the sun to seize it and cause an eclipse, as is his nature. And as Rahu drew near, he saw, to his alarm, another being rushing up toward the sun ahead of him - the child Hanuman, hurtling upward to grab it. Rahu, startled and indignant that some unknown creature should be racing him to the sun, fled to Indra, the king of the gods, and complained that a strange being was attacking the sun.

Indra, to protect the sun and to stop the child before he could harm himself or the order of the heavens, took up his thunderbolt, the vajra, and hurled it at the leaping Hanuman. The thunderbolt struck the child upon the jaw - the hanu - with terrible force, and knocked him out of the sky. The baby fell, tumbling all the way back down to the earth, struck senseless, his jaw injured by the blow of the king of the gods. And from this - from the blow upon his hanu, his jaw - the child took the name by which he would be known ever after: Hanuman, the one of the jaw.

When Vayu, the wind-god, saw his infant son struck down out of the sky by Indra's thunderbolt and falling injured to the earth, he was filled with grief and a terrible anger. That the king of the gods should have struck his little child so cruelly was more than the wind-god could bear, and he resolved to make all the worlds feel his wrath.

Vayu gathered up his son in his arms and withdrew with him into a cave, and there, in his grief and fury, he did a fearful thing: he withdrew the wind, the air, from all the worlds. The wind ceased to blow; the air grew still and then began to fail; and all living creatures, who depend upon the breath of the wind for their very lives, began to suffocate and to suffer, gasping, as the air was taken from them. Creation itself was choking, all the worlds in peril, because the wind-god in his grief had stopped the breath of the world. The gods saw that unless Vayu were appeased and the wind restored, all living things would perish.

To appease the grieving wind-god and save the suffocating worlds, the gods came together to Vayu, led by Brahma, and made amends. First they revived the injured child Hanuman, healing him and restoring him to life and health, so that he was whole and well again in his father's arms. And then, to honor the child and to console his father, the gods each granted the boy a wondrous boon.

One by one the great gods blessed the child Hanuman, and the gifts they gave him made him one of the mightiest beings in all creation. Brahma granted that he could not be slain by any weapon, and great freedom of movement. Indra granted that his body would be invincible, hard as the thunderbolt that had struck him. The sun-god granted him a portion of his own radiance and made him master of the scriptures and all learning. Yama granted him freedom from death and disease; Varuna, safety from water; the others their own gifts - the power to change his size and shape at will, to grow vast as a mountain or shrink small as a cat, immense strength, boundless speed, and a lifespan beyond the reach of death. So the child Hanuman, revived, was endowed by all the gods together with powers almost without limit - immortal, invincible, all-strong, shape-shifting, and wise. And Vayu, his son honored and restored, was appeased, and released the wind again to the worlds, and all creatures breathed once more.

So Hanuman grew up as a child of almost limitless power - and, being a child, he did not always use that power wisely. Brimming with strength and energy and the high spirits of youth, and knowing few bounds, he became exceedingly mischievous. He played pranks and worked havoc with his great powers, and in particular he troubled the sages and ascetics in their forest hermitages - snatching their belongings, disrupting their rites and their penances, teasing and tormenting them in the boisterous, thoughtless way of a powerful child who does not yet know restraint.

The sages bore his mischief patiently for a long while, for they knew the child was destined for great things and meant no real harm. But at last his pranks grew too disruptive, and they resolved to curb his unruly power - not by any harsh punishment, but by a gentle and far-sighted curse that would both restrain him now and serve a great purpose later.

The sages laid upon the mischievous Hanuman a gentle curse: that he should forget his own divine powers - that he would lose the awareness of his immense strength and his wondrous gifts, and would not know what he was capable of, until the day when someone should remind him of his powers, recounting his greatness to him; and only then would the full memory and use of his strength return to him.

So the curse settled upon Hanuman, and his great powers, though they remained within him, passed out of his own awareness. He grew up strong and noble and good, but humble and unassuming, not knowing the full measure of his own might, his immense powers lying hidden and forgotten within him, waiting to be awakened. And this gentle curse, which curbed the mischievous child, served in the end a great purpose in the story of the Lord Rama. For when, ages later, the vanaras stood despairing on the shore of the sea, needing one among them to leap the hundred leagues to Lanka to find the captive Sita, Hanuman did not at first know that he could do it - his power was forgotten, hidden by the old curse. It was only when the wise old bear Jambavan reminded him, recounting to him his divine birth and his boundless strength, that the curse was lifted, the memory of his power returned in full, and Hanuman swelled to his mountain-size and leaped across the sea - the very deed for which all his gifts had been given. The forgetting was so that the remembering might come at the appointed hour.

The sages drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas.

"See, first, in the baby who leaped to swallow the sun, the boundless and untaught confidence of great power before it has learned its bounds - and the gentle humbling such power needs. The child Hanuman, mightiest of beings, had to be struck down and then taught restraint, his unruly strength curbed by the sages, before he could become the noble servant of the Lord. Great power, the tale teaches, is a gift to be governed and humbled, not flaunted; the mighty child had to learn restraint before his might could serve a good end.

"And see the deep wisdom in his forgotten power. Hanuman's immense strength was hidden even from himself, by a curse, and lay forgotten within him until the appointed hour when, reminded of it, he awoke to it in full and leaped the sea for the Lord. There is a beautiful teaching in this: that the greatest of us often do not know our own power, that it lies hidden within us, waiting; and that it is awakened in its appointed hour, often by another who reminds us who we are. Be humble, then, about your own hidden strength, and ready to awaken to it when the hour of need calls it forth; and be, for others, the one who reminds them of the greatness they have forgotten in themselves."

And the Pandavas, whose own Bhima was the brother of Hanuman, both sons of the wind, took to heart the humbling of great power and the wisdom of the strength that waits, forgotten, for its appointed hour.