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.