Hanuman

Deity

Hanuman · हनुमान

Hanuman is the son of the wind. Anjaneya after his mother Anjana, Pavanputra after his father Vayu, and Bajrangbali for the strength of his frame — the epithets are used interchangeably and each carries its own story.

He belongs to the Ramayana, and the Sundara Kanda, the fifth book, is his: the leap across the sea to Lanka, the finding of Sita in the ashoka grove, and the burning of the city with his own tail. It is read on its own, apart from the rest of the epic, as a text of endurance.

Tuesday and Saturday are his days. Sindoor mixed with oil is offered on the image rather than applied as a mark, following the story that Hanuman covered himself in it when he learned Sita wore it for Rama's long life. The Hanuman Chalisa, forty verses composed by Tulsidas in Awadhi, is the text most recited before him.

He is one of the chiranjivi, the deathless, and is held still to be present wherever the Ramayana is recited — which is why a seat is left for him at a reading, and why his shrine so often stands at the edge of a settlement rather than at its centre.

Two episodes account for most of his imagery. Carrying the whole Dronagiri mountain because he could not identify the one herb on it gives the standing figure with a peak in his raised hand; opening his chest to show Rama and Sita within gives the kneeling one. Panchmukhi Hanuman, the five-faced form with the faces of a lion, an eagle, a boar, a horse and his own, belongs to a later story and is worshipped mainly in the south.

Hanuman Jayanti falls in Chaitra in most of the north and in Margashirsha in parts of the south, one of the few festivals whose date the regions do not agree on. He is held to be brahmachari, which is why his temples take offerings of laddu and oil rather than the paired offerings made to a deity with a consort.