Hanuman and the sun
Reading time aloud: about four minutes.
The story that explains the odd thing about Hanuman: the strongest being in the Ramayana spends most of it not realising it.
Hanuman was born to Anjana and the wind god Vayu, and from the first day he was extraordinary — strong, fast, and completely uninterested in being careful.
One morning, very small and very hungry, he looked up and saw the sun rising: round, ripe, gloriously orange, hanging in the sky like the best mango that had ever existed.
So he jumped for it.
And because his father was the wind, he did not stop climbing. Up past the birds, past the clouds, up and up towards the sun itself, with his mouth open.
It happened to be a day when Rahu had come to swallow the sun — an eclipse. Hanuman, seeing something else going for his mango, went after Rahu instead. Rahu fled to Indra, king of the gods, shouting that a child was eating the eclipse.
Indra came out and threw his thunderbolt.
It struck the child on the jaw and knocked him out of the sky, and he fell a very long way, and his jaw was broken — hanu, the jaw, which is where the name Hanuman comes from.
Then Vayu, the wind, found his son lying broken on a mountain, and stopped.
All the wind everywhere stopped. Nothing breathed. Nothing moved. The gods came very quickly.
They healed the boy, and each of them gave him a gift so that he could never be harmed again — and then, quietly, they added one more thing. Because a child that powerful, who did not understand what he was, would be dangerous to himself and everyone else.
So they made him forget. He would keep every power, and he would not remember he had them, unless someone who knew reminded him.
Which is why, centuries later, sitting at the edge of the ocean with an army that cannot cross it, Hanuman does nothing — until an old bear called Jambavan comes and stands in front of him and starts listing, one by one, the things he can do.
And Hanuman listens, and remembers, and grows, and jumps to Lanka.
It's the best story in the tradition about not knowing your own capacity, and about the person who tells you. Jambavan doesn't give Hanuman anything — he just reminds him. Worth saying to a child at the end: everyone needs a Jambavan, and sometimes you have to be one.
Whether it's a curse or a protective gift varies a lot by telling; the older versions are clearer that it was for everyone's safety. Some versions have the sun himself later teach Hanuman all the scriptures while Hanuman flies backwards in front of his chariot to keep facing him — which is how he becomes a scholar as well as a strongman.
Last updated: 2026-08-11
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