In the story
Dadhimukha is an elderly vānara, a kinsman of Sugrīva, charged with guarding the Madhuvana — the king's own honey grove, which nobody is permitted to touch.
When the southern party comes back with Hanumān's news, they are too elated to go straight to the king. They break into the grove, drink the honey, and knock the keepers about when they object. Dadhimukha takes his complaint to Sugrīva, expecting punishment for the offenders.
Sugrīva's reaction is the point of the episode. He hears that the search party has dared to raid the royal grove and concludes immediately that they have found her — because only success would make them that reckless — and orders them brought in with honour instead of under arrest.
Why it is in the poem
It is a small comic scene in a book that has just spent a great deal of time on despair, and it does real narrative work: it lets the good news reach Kiṣkindhā by inference rather than by announcement, which is a more interesting way to deliver it. The episode is a favourite in performance and in painting.
Reading the plunder
Sugrīva's inference from the raid on his honey grove is a small masterpiece of the epic's habit of delivering news sideways. Told that the search party has broken into the royal preserve and beaten his warden, he concludes at once that they have found Sītā — because only success would make them that reckless — and orders them brought in with honour.
The scene is a favourite in painting and performance, and it gives the fourth book a moment of comedy immediately before the fifth book's crossing.
Further reading
- Bose, Mandakranta. The Ramayana Revisited. Oxford University Press, 2004
- Goldman, Robert P. The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India. Princeton University Press, 1984
- Nagar, Shanti Lal. Genesis and Evolution of the Rama Katha in Indian Art, Thought, Literature and Culture. B.R. Publishing, 2005
- Ramanujan, A. K. The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Oxford University Press, 1999
- Richman, Paula. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia. University of California Press, 1991
See also
- Sugrīva — Sugrīva is the vānara king of Kiṣkindhā in the Rāmāyaṇa, driven out by his brother Vālī over a misunderstanding, restored by Rāma's arrow, and the ally whose army wins the war after he has nearly forgotten his promise.
- Hanumān — Hanumān is the vānara minister of Sugrīva in the Rāmāyaṇa who leaps the ocean to find Sītā in Laṅkā and burns the city, and who became in later devotion the model of service and one of the most widely worshipped deities in India.
- Aṅgada — Aṅgada is the son of Vālī and Tārā in the Rāmāyaṇa, made crown prince of Kiṣkindhā at his father's dying request, who led the southern search and went as Rāma's envoy to Rāvaṇa's court.
- Kiṣkindhā Kāṇḍa — The Kiṣkindhā Kāṇḍa is the fourth book of the Rāmāyaṇa, in which Rāma allies with the exiled monkey king Sugrīva, kills his brother Vālī from concealment, and the search parties are sent out to find Sītā.
- Kiṣkindhā — Kiṣkindhā is the vānara kingdom of the Rāmāyaṇa, ruled by Vālī and then by Sugrīva, where Rāma made the alliance that won him the war.
- Jāmbavān — Jāmbavān is the ancient king of the bears in the Rāmāyaṇa, the oldest of Rāma's allies, who reminded Hanumān of the strength he had forgotten and so made the crossing to Laṅkā possible.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.