When blessing Hanuman with his many boons, the gods thought it wise to also present young Hanuman with a curse that he would not be able to remember his great powers. After all, they feared the havoc that a young Hanuman could cause if he was given all of these powers and left to treat the world like his playbox.
Some years later, Hanuman found himself in the company of Sugriva, an exiled ape king, but the ape king who Hanuman thought truly belonged on the throne. At this time, a young adult Hanuman served as Sugriva's right-hand lieutenant and helped to command the army of apes who serve Sugriva. Hanuman and Sugriva walked into the forest, going out for a typical walk to scout out the area and maybe find a nice tree or two to climb. Their peaceful afternoon was abruptly interrupted by a loud rustling in the trees.
Sugriva sniffed the air deeply and turned to Hanuman. "Smells like humans," the chief whispered into Hanuman's ear. They hid in some nearby trees and waited for the humans to pass. When the humans entered their sight, Hanuman noticed that they were two men and that one of them was blue! He nodded to Sugriva and approached the blue man.
"Halt!" Hanuman proclaimed. "Who are you to wander through the forest of the ape king Sugriva?" he asked the strange men.
The blue human exchanged a glance with his companion and finally spoke, "My name is Rama and this is my brother, Lakshmana. We have been exiled from our home kingdom, Ayodha, and recently my wife, Sita, was captured by Ravana."
Hanuman peered into their soul to assess their story. He was unsure about Rama, but the twinkle in Lakshmana's eyes indicated a world of truth. "I am sorry to hear of your loss," the lieutenant said in a soft voice. "I am also exiled in a sense. I am loyal to Sugriva, the exiled ape king." Hanuman gestured to Sugriva, who walked forward from the trees.
They spent the next few hours commiserating about their situations. During this time, Jambavan, the King of the Bears, approached them and asked to join. Sugriva was supposed to come over for dinner but had gotten so wrapped up in conversation with Rama and Lakshmana that he had forgotten to show up. Jambavan worried for the safety of his friend when he failed to show up. So he went to the forest that bridged their domains to find his friend. When Jambavan joined, it was well past dinnertime, so they set up a camp where they sat and put together a warm fire to gather around.
After they hunted for sustenance and put together a warm meal, Rama let out a huge sigh. "It has been great to converse and share our problems with you all. I'm just very concerned about my Sita in the hands of that evil demon king Ravana. He thinks that he's so safe and secure behind his fortress and his walls... The more I think about it, the more that Lanka seems like an excessively opulent palace designed to hide a coward of a ruler. We have yet to find a way to breach the impenetrable island of Lanka."
Jambavan nudged Hanuman, who was sitting next to him by the fire. "You should go to the island, Hanuman," the great bear spoke in a low rumble.
Everyone stared at Jambavan as if some weird mushrooms had gotten into his dinner. Finally, Hanuman spoke, "What ever do you mean, my lord?"
Jambavan spoke with Hanuman and reminded the monkey of the multitude of boons and powers that he was bestowed with when he was a young boy. Hanuman was very surprised to hear this. But when Jambavan told him to try it out, Hanuman leapt high into the sky, and caught a buzzard that had been eyeing the crew's leftovers. He brought it back down, fed it a little, and then released it. Everyone at the campfire stared in total shock as they just witnessed something that they previously thought was impossible.
Suddenly, it felt like the crew had a plan: Hanuman could travel to the island and make the leap over the wall guarding Lanka. There, he could scout out Sita and bring back info to assist in creating siege plans.
The next day, the crew travelled out to the land closest to the island of Lanka. There, Hanuman made his magical leap. Lakshmana's jaw dropped in disbelief. Jambavan stood there and smiled, much like a proud parent who has encouraged their child.
Hanuman was not aware that there were evil rakshasas who guarded the entrance the the island Lanka. After some dodgy turns and a few split-second maneuvers, he successfully glid over them and into Lanka. There, he found Sita. He offered to carry her on his back, but she insisted that Rama has to be the one to save her in order to preserve his Dharma. Not wanting to mess with the great force that was Dharma, Hanuman nodded. However, he wondered "what is my Dharma?" As he walked around and pondered this, his tail caught on fire. He failed to notice at first due to his boon from Agni, the god of fire, and walked around with his torch of a tail. Bit by bit, Lanka caught on fire. The fire did as fires do and spread like... well... wildfire. Soon, Lanka began to perish in flames. Hanuman finally noticed the blazing fire around him and decided to immediately fly the coop. He octupled his size and flew back to Rama, Lakshama, Sugriva, and Jambavan, where he told them what he observed and what happened.
I absolutely love this story from the Ramayana, and I vividly remember cackling out loud when I read it. The one bit that I wanted to elaborate on was the role of Jambavana as Hanuman's mentor. This felt like it would be a really good opportunity for storytelling for two principal purposes: 1) it allows me to explore Hanuman more in-depth as a character in his own right rather than as just an agent of Sugriva or Rama and 2) it allows me to fill out Jambavan as an auxiliary character here, which is always good to have fresh source material when character-building.
Here in this part of the story and in one aspect, Hanuman goes through parts of his own monomyth story, where the inability to remember his boons can be interpreted as a "refusal of the call" and his inspirational talk from Jambavan is quite literally the "encounter with a mentor." There's also the interpretation that multiple different heroes can co-exist in the Ramayana depending on how you define "hero" in this context. Is "hero" somebody who fulfills their Dharma? In that case, Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Hanuman, and plenty others could be considered heroes in their own right. This concept was introduced to me by Mike Rugnetta from Crash Course World Mythology. I've embedded the Ramayana video below, which is where I drew a lot of the inspiration for this story.
For the sake of brevity, I omitted several parts of the story: the part where Rama and Lakshmana ascertain Sita's whereabouts by discussing with Jatayu, the part where Hanuman fights the Sea Monsters guarding Lanka (cool part, I know!) the part where Hanuman stumbles upon the wife of Ravana before finding Sita, the whole part about it being monsoon season and Sugriva's armies needing to wait before they deploy.
Additionally, the Chalisa paints Hanuman as terrifying and gigantic, but I thought that it would be interesting to make him more aloof.
These events, specifically Hanuman entering and burning down Lanka, can be found in the Hanuman Chalisa.
Awadhi:
suksma rupa dhari siyahin dikhava,
vikata rupa dhari lanka jarava,
bhima rupa dhari asura sanhare,
ramachandra ke kaja sanvare
English:
"You appeared before Sita in a very small form, but you burned Lanka with a terrifying form and killed the demons with a gigantic form. In this way you always serve Lord Rama."
Crash Course World Mythology: Ramayana (embedded below)
Image Credit: Hanuman Burns Lanka from Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley