What happens
Lakṣmaṇa is struck down twice in the war — first by Indrajit's serpent-weapons, from which Garuḍa releases him, and then by Rāvaṇa's spear, which very nearly kills him. On the second occasion the vānara physician Suṣeṇa names four herbs that grow on a particular mountain in the north and sends Hanumān for them.
Hanumān flies north, reaches the mountain, and cannot identify the plants — by one account they conceal themselves from him. Rather than return empty-handed or waste time, he tears up the peak and carries it back entire. Suṣeṇa takes what he needs and Lakṣmaṇa is revived; the mountain is returned.
It is Hanumān, not Rāvaṇa, who carries the fallen Lakṣmaṇa from the field earlier in the fighting — a detail popular retellings frequently reverse.
Its afterlife
The image of Hanumān flying with a mountain in one hand is the single most reproduced picture of him in Indian art, and it is the form in which he most often appears in temple images and calendar prints. The episode has also attached itself to real places: several hills in India and one in Sri Lanka are identified as the peak or as fragments dropped in transit, and the herbs are periodically the subject of modern speculation about what plant might have been meant.
The pattern of the episode — an impossible instruction met by a solution that ignores the instruction — is characteristic of Hanumān throughout the poem.
Two crises, two rescues
The epic distinguishes the occasions and popular summary usually merges them. In the first, Indrajit's serpent-weapons bind both brothers and the army despairs; Garuḍa arrives and the bonds fall away. In the second, Rāvaṇa's spear strikes Lakṣmaṇa down and the physician Suṣeṇa names four herbs on a northern mountain; Hanumān is sent, cannot identify them, and brings the peak.
The mountain-carrying belongs to the second. It is also Hanumān, not Rāvaṇa, who carries the fallen Lakṣmaṇa off the field earlier in the fighting — a detail retellings frequently reverse.
The image
Hanumān airborne with a mountain in one hand is the most widely reproduced picture of him in Indian art, and it functions almost as a signature: a devotee who, told to bring something he cannot identify, brings everything rather than fail.
Several hills in India and Sri Lanka are identified as the peak, or as pieces of it dropped in transit, and the herbs have attracted a good deal of modern speculation about what plant might have been meant.
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
- 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.
- Suṣeṇa — Suṣeṇa is the vānara physician in the Rāmāyaṇa, father of Tārā, who identified the healing herbs of the northern mountain and revived Lakṣmaṇa when Rāvaṇa's spear had felled him.
- 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.
- Indrajit — Indrajit is Rāvaṇa's eldest son in the Rāmāyaṇa, who defeated Indra and took his name from it, fought the war from the air and unseen, and was killed by Lakṣmaṇa at an unfinished sacrifice.
- Rāma — Rāma is the prince of Ayodhyā at the centre of the Rāmāyaṇa, exiled for fourteen years by his father's promise, and worshipped across the Hindu world as an incarnation of Viṣṇu and the model of righteous conduct.
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.