Born of Wind and Devotion: The Birth of Hanuman

Hanuman is one of the most widely loved figures in Hindu tradition: the monkey-hero of the Rāmāyaṇa, Rama’s devoted messenger, and a god worshipped across India for strength, courage and devotion. This page tells the story of his birth and childhood — who his parents were, how he came by his name, and why a child of such power spent his early years not knowing how powerful he was. Versions differ, and where they do, this page says so.

Who is who

• Anjana — Hanuman’s mother. She was an apsara (a celestial nymph of Indra’s heaven) who had been born as a monkey through a curse.
• Kesari — her husband, a great and powerful monkey chief. Hanuman is often called Kesarīnandana, “son of Kesari.”
• Vayu — the Wind God, also called Pavana or Maruta. Hanuman is his son, which is why he is called Pavanaputra, “son of the wind,” and Māruti.
• Vānaras — the forest people of the Rāmāyaṇa, usually pictured as monkeys, among whom Hanuman is born.

Anjana

Anjana was an apsara who had been born as a monkey — a forest-dwelling, tree-scaling, thoroughly agile monkey — through a curse that could be lifted only in a particular circumstance. In many tellings her curse would end when she gave birth to a son of great power. She had married Kesari, and they lived on the mountain slopes with the ease and joy of two beings who had found each other in an unexpected place.

In Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa, where the elder bear-king Jambavan tells the story, Anjana’s name in heaven was Puñjikasthalā.

A son of the wind

How Vayu became Hanuman’s father is told in more than one way.

• Anjana’s prayer. In a widely told version, Anjana prayed for a son, and prayed with the intensity that in the tradition’s logic brings results. She prayed to the Wind God, asking for a son who would inherit something of the wind’s nature — its freedom, its speed, its ability to go anywhere and be stopped by nothing. Vayu granted it.
• Vālmīki’s account. In the Rāmāyaṇa, Vayu sees Anjana as she stands on a mountain, is drawn to her, and touches her unseen. When she protests, he reassures her that her faithfulness to Kesari is not broken: he has entered her only in spirit, and she will bear a son equal to him in strength and speed.
• Shiva’s portion. The Śiva Purāṇa and many devotees regard Hanuman as a form of Shiva himself. One telling links his birth to the moment Shiva saw Vishnu as Mohini: Shiva’s energy was carried by Vayu and placed in Anjana, so that Shiva could be born to serve Rama.
• The sacred pudding. Some later retellings connect Hanuman’s birth with Rama’s. When King Dasharatha performed a ritual for sons, a portion of the sacred pudding given to his queens was carried off by a bird and dropped into Anjana’s hands.

However it is told, the result is the same. The son born from this arrangement — Anjana’s son, Kesari’s son, Vayu’s son — was Hanuman. For this reason Hanuman is also called Āñjaneya, “son of Anjana.”

The child

He came into the world with the energy of the wind. Like wind, he was fully present from his first breath, filling whatever space was available and moving without self-consciousness.

Even as an infant he was extraordinary. Later traditions describe his face as glowing red-gold, the colour of the early morning sun — bright, warming and slightly startling. His body was compact and powerful. His tail, the long monkey’s tail that would become one of his most famous features, was already remarkable in the cradle.

Several places in India are identified in local tradition as his birthplace, and each has its own devotees and pilgrimage sites.

The leap for the sun

He was also hungry.

One morning, as an infant not yet trained in the ways of the world, Hanuman saw the rising sun and mistook it for a ripe fruit — most popular tellings say a mango. It was round, it was orange, it seemed within reach, and he was hungry. He leaped.

That leap from the earth to the sun was the first sign of the ability that would define his story: to go wherever he needed to go and cross whatever distance needed crossing, in service of something. Here the service was purely appetite, but the power was the same one that would later carry him across the ocean to Lanka.

Indra, king of the gods, saw the infant hurtling towards the sun and threw his thunderbolt, the vajra. It struck Hanuman and he fell, and his jaw was injured in the fall. That injury is where his name comes from: hanu means “jaw” in Sanskrit, and Hanumān is “the one with the (marked) jaw.” Popular retellings often explain it as “curved chin,” from the slight angle at which his jaw was set.

The wind stops

Vayu was furious that his son had been struck down. He withdrew from the world and stopped blowing, and the consequences were soon felt by every living thing. Without wind there is no breath, and without breath there is no life. The universe was in immediate crisis.

The gods came to Vayu and made amends, and each gave Hanuman a boon, a divine gift. Between them they made him proof against the very weapons that had been used on him, and gave him swiftness and long life. The lists differ from source to source, which is worth knowing rather than glossing over; the fullest telling on this site is in the account of the sun-leap itself.

So Hanuman, who had been struck down for his first innocent mistake, rose more powerful than he had been in the cradle, with the blessing of every major deity in the cosmos.

A mischievous childhood

His childhood was the childhood of any being with extraordinary power who has not yet learned how to use it. He was clever, fast and strong, and he used these gifts with the uncalibrated enthusiasm of youth — pulling the beards of sages in meditation, upsetting the quiet of their ashrams (forest hermitages), and generally making the forest around him an exciting and somewhat exhausting place.

The curse of forgetting

Eventually the sages placed a gentle curse on him: he would forget, for a time, the full extent of his powers, and remember them only when someone reminded him. Popular retellings often name the sage Matanga. In Vālmīki’s Uttara Kāṇḍa, the curse is laid by sages of the Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras lineages, whose rituals he had disturbed.

This sounds like punishment, but the tradition interprets it as education. How does a being of boundless power learn patience, service, and the right moment for strength? By living for a while without full access to it, having to work at things, and meeting in time the purpose for which the power was given.

The purpose that was coming

That purpose had a name: Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, whose life story is the Rāmāyaṇa. Hanuman grew up in the forest kingdom of Kishkindha and became the minister and companion of the exiled monkey-king Sugriva. It was in Sugriva’s service that he first met Rama, and from that meeting his devotion began.

The remembering came a little later. When the search for Rama’s wife Sita brought the monkey army to the edge of the ocean, and no one could see how to cross to Lanka, Jambavan told Hanuman the story of his birth and reminded him of who he was. Hanuman remembered everything he had forgotten — and leaped.

Where the story comes from

• Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa — Hanuman’s birth is recounted by Jambavan in the Kiṣkindhā Kāṇḍa, just before the leap to Lanka. The fuller account of his childhood — the leap for the sun, Indra’s thunderbolt, Vayu’s withdrawal, the boons and the sages’ curse — is told to Rama by the sage Agastya in the Uttara Kāṇḍa.
• Śiva Purāṇa — presents Hanuman as an incarnation of Shiva.
• Later retellings in regional languages, devotional literature and oral tradition add or change details, such as the sacred-pudding story and the name of the cursing sage. Tulsidas’s Hanuman Chalisa refers to him as the son of Anjana and of the wind, and to the sun-leap.

How the story is read

• Power waiting for purpose. The childhood is often read as a picture of great ability that is not yet joined to a purpose. The curse of forgetting keeps his strength safe until it can be used in service.
• Remembering who you are. Jambavan’s reminder is widely taken as a teaching about self-knowledge: people often have strengths they cannot see until someone who knows them names them.
• Wind and breath. As son of the wind, Hanuman is linked with prāṇa, the breath of life. Vayu’s withdrawal shows the tradition’s sense that life depends on this unseen force.

Worship today

Hanuman’s birth is celebrated as Hanuman Jayanti, though regions observe it at different times of year according to their own calendars. Tuesdays, and in many places Saturdays, are also widely kept as days for his worship, and texts such as the Hanuman Chalisa are recited at home and in temples.

Read on AdiVeda

• The Day Hanuman Tried to Eat the Sun — the sun-leap and the boons in detail.
• The First Meeting: Rama and Hanuman — where his devotion begins.
• The Greatest Leap: Hanuman Crosses the Ocean — the moment he remembers his power.
• Hanuman Chalisa — the best-known hymn to Hanuman.
• Hanuman texts on AdiVeda — stotras, mantras, aarti and more.