Philip Lutgendorf Hanumans Tal
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Hanuman’s Tale A Kannada-language poster shows Hanuman’s body inscribed with devotional poems; late twentieth century Hanuman’s Tale The Messages of a Divine Monkey philip lutgendorf 1 2007 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright # 2007 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lutgendorf, Philip. Hanuman’s tale: the messages of a divine monkey/Philip Lutgendorf. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-19-530921-8; 978-0-19-530922-5 (pbk.) ISBN 0-19-530921-9; 0-19-530922-7 (pbk.) 1. Hanuman (Hindu deity). 2. Hanuman (Hindu deity) in literature. 3. Hindu literature, Hindi—History and criticism. I. Title. BL1225.H3L87 2006 294.5'2113—dc22 2006045391 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper In remembrance of Eruch, disciple of Meher Baba; and for Susan, Mira, and Claire My heart, Lord, holds this conviction: Greater than Rama is Rama’s servant. ——Tulsidas (Ra¯mcaritma¯nas 7.120.16) Preface and Prashasti* This book project, like the posterior appendage of its beloved subject, has grown longer and longer and has hung around for a consider- able time. The inspiration for it first emerged during my research, mainly in the Banaras region in 1982–84, on the performance of the Ra¯mcaritma¯nas, the popular Hindi retelling of the tale of Rama and Sita by the sixteenth-century poet-saint Tulsidas. This research led not only to my book The Life of a Text (1991) but to my growing realization that, in the experience and practice of many people, the most vibrant and endearing character in the story wasn’t Rama, but rather Hanuman. Given that scholarly literature seemed virtually unaware of this (a circumstance I discuss further in chapter 1), I resolved to write a book that would give Rama’s simian associate the prominence he had long achieved in everyday life. Initial research was carried out under a senior research fellow- ship from the American Institute of Indian Studies in 1989–90. During this year I was frequently on the move, collecting images, interviews, and popular and scholarly publications from sites in North, central, and South India. The materials I brought back to the United States kept me busy for years, and kept growing as I made return visits to India (several with support from the University of Iowa) and as friends around the world sent me books, news clippings, posters, and (more recently) e-mail messages and Web site addresses featuring everyone’s favorite monkey. I made significant progress in organiz- ing and interpreting my ‘‘Hanuman archive’’ during summer vaca- tions and two semesters of developmental leave funded by the * Prassasti (Sanskrit): the eulogizing of patrons and benefactors. viii preface and prashasti university, including one at its Obermann Institute for Advanced Studies. An outline for a book of seven chapters (reflecting, by happy coincidence, the usual number of Ramayana subbooks) emerged early on, then it too unavoidably grew: Hanuman, it became clear, would require eight chapters, at least—and though much has been omitted, I had to stop somewhere! The project was slowed by several terms as a department chairman and by many invitations to write conference papers and essays. None of the half dozen articles on Ha- numan that I have published during the past decade correspond exactly to chapters in this book, and some of them contain additional material that is beyond its scope. However, portions of several of them are incorporated here, and there was simply no other way to begin chapter 1 than with a revised and updated version of the opening section of my first such essay (Lutgendorf 1994b), though I quickly depart from its content. I am grateful to the editors of Contributions to Indian Sociology, History of Religions, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Manushi, and Religion, and to Oxford University Press and Sage Publications for their understanding regarding these edited excerpts. Com- pletion of the first draft of the manuscript during 2002–03 was made possible through the generosity of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the University of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I especially thank Deans Linda Maxson and Rau´l Curto for their encouragement of my research during a period when our university (like most public universities in the United States) was suffering severe budget reductions. Additional support from the university’s vice president for research has helped underwrite the illustration of this volume. I also thank my editor, Theo Calderara of Oxford University Press, for his enthusiasm for this project, and the press’s two anonymous readers for their corrections and good advice on reigning in my prolixity. Production editor Gwen Colvin and copyeditor Norma McClemore provided further valued assistance. I can never adequately thank, or even properly catalog, all the friends, colleagues, and devotees of Hanuman (the latter category not excluding the former two) who helped me in my work over the years. But I cannot fail to mention, in Banaras, Ramji Pandey of Ramnagar, Chandradharprasad Nara- yan Singh (‘‘Bhanuji’’) of Nagwa, and Ramnarayan Shukla and Veerbhadra Mishra of the Sankat Mochan temple; Ratnesh Pathak guided me on a walking tour of Hanuman shrines in several neighborhoods. In Ayodhya, Nritya Gopal Das provided hospitality, and I greatly benefited from the insights of Pandit Ramkumar Das and (after his death) those of his disciple Sacchidanand Das of Mani Parvat. It was also in Ayodhya that I first met the great Ramayana scholar Bhagavati Prasad Singh of Gorakhpur University, whose work I have long admired. We became friends, and I was fortunate to record a last interview with him only a few days before his death in Vrindaban in January 1994. Also in Vrindaban, I was accommodated and assisted by Shrivats Goswami and the late Asim Krishna Das. In Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, I was hosted and guided by Gokaran and Urmila Shrivastava. In Pune, I was given a memorable tour of Maruti shrines by Sudhir Wagmare and further assisted by Jeffrey Brackett and Anne Feldhaus. In Bangalore, Girish Karnad and Saraswati Ganapathy preface and prashasti ix provided extraordinary hospitality to my family for a month, and my research in Mysore and elsewhere in Karnataka State owed much to the energetic assis- tance of M. S. Nagaraja Rao, former director general of the Archaeological Survey of India. At Hampi, I was guided to (what many consider) Hanuman’s birthplace and other important sites by archeologists John Fritz and John (‘‘Kim’’) Malville. Whenever I passed through Delhi I was warmly welcomed and assisted by the staff of the American Institute of Indian Studies and by its director general, Pradeep Mehendiratta, and I also received help from Jagannath Das of the Connaught Place Hanuman temple and from the re- sourceful Kailash Jha. Jyotindra Jain, who is now dean of the School of Art and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University but was previously director of the National Handlooms and Handicrafts Museum, gave me much appreciated help. I spent two pleasant afternoons in the Hanuman Museum at Gurgaon created by K. C. Aryan and his children, Subhashini and B. N. Aryan, who continued to assist me after their father’s death. On several visits to Taos, New Mexico, I was warmly received by Dwarka Bonner, Patrick Finn, and other members of the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram community. It has been my good fortune to do much of the final writing and editing of this book in a peaceful cabin on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. I thank the friends in Boulder, Colorado, and environs who have welcomed me and my family to this area: Dorothy Terner, Susan Osborne, Alan Boles, Dennis and Beth McGilvray, Craig Cameron, Stanley and Connie Heginbotham, Tom Coburn, and Jim and Audrey Benedict. The nearby (and, for me, aptly named) Indian Peaks, with their majestic pinnacles and shining snowfields, have in- spired me and reminded me of my happy sojourns in the Himalayas and of Hanuman’s abiding presence there. To attempt to cite all the academic colleagues who have guided, chided, and encouraged me over the years concerning this seemingly endless project would easily result in another Hanuma¯yana (see chapter 3 for an explanation of this neologism), as well as something of a catalog of South Asia scholars worldwide; the publications of some of those who are noted here are of course cited at appropriate places. I apologize in advance to those whose names, for reasons of space or faulty memory, I do not list here. But I cannot fail to mention Joseph Alter, Mandakranta Bose, Jeffrey Brackett, Winand Callewaert, Mathieu Claveyrolas, Paul Courtright, Wendy Doniger, Daniel Gold, Robert Gold- man and Sally Sutherland Goldman, Linda Hess, Istva´n Keul, Nita Kumar, Kirin Narayan, Antti Pakaslahti, William Pinch, Sheldon Pollock, Sumathy Ramaswami, V. Narayana Rao, Peter van der Veer, Anila Verghese, Susan S.