Through trickery, Ravana, the King of the Rakaswas, abducts Sita in order to make her his queen. Rama and Lakshmana rush off in pursuit of Sita with the aid of an army of monkeys.
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Rama chases a deer |
Especially beloved by the Hindus is Rama’s monkey friend Hanuman. Religion writer Phillip Lutgendorf give us the back-story of the importance of Hanuman and monkeys “Hanuman and his va¯nara cohorts (a word that appears literally to mean ‘forest creature’,and that became one of the most common Sanskrit synonyms for ‘monkey’), make their first appearance in Indic literature in the fourth book of the Valmiki Ra¯ma¯yana (ca.fourth century BCE), when Ram, searching for his kidnapped wife, penetrates into their forest realm of Kishkindha.
Unlike most of the other categories of non-human beings who occupy the crowded cosmos of Sanskrit epic literature—devas, gandharvas, asuras, ra¯ksasas, na¯gas, etc.—Valmiki’s highly sentient simians, endowed with sharp claws and luxuriant tails, but also with the faculty of speech and with such supernatural talents as shape-shifting and flight, appear to be without parallel or precursors in other early texts; indeed, the epic itself explains this circumstance by making them the offspring of celestials, fathered on va¯nara women for the specific purpose of assisting Vishnu-Ram in his earthly task of subduing demons”. Further, Hanuman is presented as having absolute devotion to Rama. As Rama has absolute devotion to his cause against evil, Hanuman the archetypal servant/innocent, has absolute devotion to Rama.
Unlike most of the other categories of non-human beings who occupy the crowded cosmos of Sanskrit epic literature—devas, gandharvas, asuras, ra¯ksasas, na¯gas, etc.—Valmiki’s highly sentient simians, endowed with sharp claws and luxuriant tails, but also with the faculty of speech and with such supernatural talents as shape-shifting and flight, appear to be without parallel or precursors in other early texts; indeed, the epic itself explains this circumstance by making them the offspring of celestials, fathered on va¯nara women for the specific purpose of assisting Vishnu-Ram in his earthly task of subduing demons”. Further, Hanuman is presented as having absolute devotion to Rama. As Rama has absolute devotion to his cause against evil, Hanuman the archetypal servant/innocent, has absolute devotion to Rama.
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