The Story of Suvannamaccha and Hanuman

In the Court of the Mermaid Queen

He then swam from room to room, but found no one. And then he heard… the singing. He paused for a moment to ascertain its direction. Beautiful singing. He followed the song's sound until he found himself in an inner courtyard, and there he saw the mermaid. As soon as the mermaid noticed Hanuman, she stopped singing and stared at him with a look of shock on her face. "It's . . . you!" she stuttered.

"I am Hanuman," he replied, confused by her words. He then added angrily, "Your crocodile beasts have attacked my army and destroyed my bridge."

The mermaid swam down to a seaweed-covered couch in the center of the courtyard and gestured for Hanuman to join her. "Please," she said, "come sit with me, and I will explain."

Once Hanuman had seated himself, she continued, "We were acting on King Ravana's orders." Hanuman bristled at the mention of Ravana's name.

"Aha," she continued, "well, yes, it was actually Queen Mandodari who conveyed his request. She has always been kind to me, so when she told me that there was an army coming from the north who were going to invade Lanka, threatening to take her and all of Ravana's wives into captivity, I offered my help. She asked that I destroy the bridge that you are building. I never meant any harm. Certainly not to you. Not ever. Apparently I have made a great mistake, Hanuman, and I am humbly sorry for it."

Again, he was puzzled by the way she spoke to him as if she knew him; he was sure he had never met her before. "But who are you?" he asked. "And why do you speak to me this way, as if you know me?"

Suvannamaccha's Secret

"But I do know you," she said. "You don't remember, of course. It was a long time ago, when you were following Surya the sun-god as your guru. I was a celestial singer then, an apsara. I saw how you reverently ran backwards across the sky, always facing Surya's chariot, never tiring, honoring your guru all day long. I vowed that you, and only you, would be my husband someday. I must have spoken my thoughts out loud because Surya heard me, and he cursed me to become the creature you see now: a mermaid who lives under the water, no longer breathing the air of the sky. They call me Suvannamaccha, the Golden-Fish."

Hanuman had known nothing of this woman, and nothing of the curse that his guru had pronounced upon her. But he also sensed that the words she spoke were the truth.

"And I too am humbly sorry to have been the cause of your trouble, Suvannamaccha," Hanuman said. He then knelt before her and told her the story of Prince Rama and his wife Sita, how Ravana had kidnapped Sita against her will and taken her to Lanka, and how Rama had come with an army of monkeys to petition Ravana to return Sita to him. And that if Ravana refused, then there would be war.