The monkey army had found the shore. After the search that had covered every forest and mountain and river of the subcontinent, after the intelligence gathered from eagles and other animals, after every other option had been eliminated, what remained was clear: Sita was in Lanka. Lanka was across the ocean. The ocean was one hundred yojanas wide — the standard translation is about 800 miles, but the text is not trying to give a distance you can verify; it is trying to give a number that means: impassable.
The generals of the monkey army looked at the water. The greatest warriors in the animal world stood at the edge of what they could not cross and fell silent. Various offers were made. Angada, the son of Vali, said he could perhaps leap across but was not sure he could make the return journey with any useful information. Jambavan, the ancient bear king, said his great jumping days were past.
They were running out of options when Jambavan turned to someone who had been sitting quietly at the edge of the group, watching the water.
‘Hanuman,’ Jambavan said. ‘Why are you silent?’
Hanuman looked at the old bear. There was a curse in his background — the gentle curse of the sage Matanga, placed in his childhood to teach him the proper use of power — and one of its effects was that Hanuman did not always have full access to his own knowledge of what he could do. He had to be reminded. Not because the power was gone, but because the reminder was the mechanism of its activation: someone had to recognize him, name him, speak his nature to him.
Jambavan spoke his nature to him. He spoke of Hanuman’s birth — the son of the wind, the son of divine intention. He spoke of the boons gathered in that extraordinary morning of the sun-leap, the immunity and the speed and the strength. He spoke of the leap that had taken an infant across the sky to the sun. He spoke of what this creature was capable of, the totality of it, unhedged and uncaveated.
As Jambavan spoke, Hanuman grew.
This is described in the text with a physical literalness: his body expanded. He grew to the size of a mountain, his form expanding to fill the space that his nature actually required — the small monkey-servant of Rama becoming, for the duration of what was necessary, the manifestation of what the wind god’s son really was. His tail curled behind him enormous. His face — the face of absolute devotion combined with absolute power, the combination that makes devotees weep when they contemplate it — was calm.
He climbed Mahendra Hill and crouched on its summit, compressing that enormous body for the leap, the mountain itself bending slightly under his concentrated weight. The monkeys around him stepped back in awe and perhaps some healthy caution.
He leaped.
The launch was like a second dawn — the displaced air rushing out from under him in a shock wave that laid the trees flat and raised the sea and set off the birds of the coast in panicked flight. He rose into the sky carrying Rama’s name in his heart like a lamp in a cave, the name providing direction the way stars provide direction to sailors.
The crossing was not uneventful. The sea-goddess Surasa appeared and insisted he must enter her mouth, for it was the rule that nothing could cross without entering her. Hanuman expanded to fill her expanding mouth, then contracted to the size of a thumb, entered and exited in an instant, and was gone before she’d finished processing what had happened. A she-demon named Simhika tried to catch his shadow and drag him down. He killed her cleanly and continued.
He arrived on Lanka’s shore. He reduced his size — to nothing extraordinary, a small monkey, the kind that moves through trees without anyone noting it as significant. He searched the city. He found Sita in the Ashoka grove, thin and grieving and attended by demonesses, and he sat in the tree above her and softly, in a voice that no demon nearby would register, he began to tell the story of Rama.
Sita looked up. And then, because Hanuman was carrying Rama’s ring and the story of Rama’s love and because some things are recognized before they are understood, she knew.
He had crossed the uncrossable. He had found what could not be found. He had done what he was sent to do. And he would do more before he left Lanka — create a certain amount of notable destruction, meet Ravana, set fire to a significant portion of the city with his own burning tail — but this moment, in the Ashoka grove, with Sita looking up at the small monkey who had come so far — this is the moment that the leap was for.
He carried Rama’s message. He returned with hers. The ocean was still there, still one hundred yojanas wide. It was no longer impassable. Hanuman had proven that.