In the story
Suṣeṇa is an elderly vānara versed in healing, the father of Vālī's queen Tārā, and a commander of troops in the army that marches on Laṅkā. His knowledge decides the war's darkest passage.
When Rāvaṇa's spear strikes Lakṣmaṇa down and he is taken for dead, it is Suṣeṇa who identifies what is needed — four herbs that grow on a particular mountain in the north — sends Hanumān to fetch them, and administers the cure. Hanumān, unable to identify the plants on the peak, brings the peak.
An earlier crisis is handled differently: when Indrajit's serpent-weapons lay both brothers low, it is Jāmbavān who despatches Hanumān to the same mountain. The epic distinguishes the two occasions, and popular summaries often merge them.
His place
Suṣeṇa is the only physician in the poem and the reason the war does not end twice over. His presence in the vānara army is part of the epic's insistence that this is a real force with a real order — a king, a marshal, scouts, engineers and a doctor — rather than a mob of animals following a hero.
The only physician
Suṣeṇa's presence in the vānara army is one of the details that makes it an army rather than a mob: a king, a marshal, scouts, an engineer, a crown prince and a doctor with a knowledge of Himalayan pharmacology.
Twice the war would have ended without him. The epic is careful about which crisis is which — Jāmbavān sends Hanumān for the mountain after Indrajit's serpent-weapons, Suṣeṇa after Rāvaṇa's spear — and popular summaries generally merge them.
Tārā's father
He is also the father of Vālī's queen, which places him inside the fourth book's dynastic quarrel as well as the sixth book's war. The epic does not develop the connection, but it is one of several threads that make Kiṣkindhā a household rather than a faction.
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
- The sañjīvanī and the mountain — The sañjīvanī episode in the Rāmāyaṇa is Hanumān's flight to a mountain in the north for four healing herbs, and his return with the entire peak when he cannot tell which plants they are.
- 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.
- Lakṣmaṇa — Lakṣmaṇa is Rāma's younger brother in the Rāmāyaṇa, who follows him into exile and serves fourteen years as guard and companion, mutilates Śūrpaṇakhā, kills Indrajit, and carries out the order to abandon Sītā.
- Tārā of Kiṣkindhā — Tārā is the queen of Vālī in the Rāmāyaṇa, the shrewdest counsellor in Kiṣkindhā, who warned her husband against the fight that killed him and later talked Lakṣmaṇa out of destroying the city.
- Yuddha Kāṇḍa — The Yuddha Kāṇḍa is the sixth and longest book of the Rāmāyaṇa, covering the bridging of the sea, the siege of Laṅkā, the deaths of Kumbhakarṇa, Indrajit and Rāvaṇa, Sītā's ordeal by fire and the return to Ayodhyā.
- 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.