The Legend of Hanuman Ji

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Sri Ram is the most popular deity among the Hindus. Hanuman Ji is his greatest devotee and also the keeper of the gates that lead to Sri Ram. The devout believe that the only way to reach Sri Ram is through Hanuman Ji. That Hanuman Ji and the Vanars were monkeys is a belief that has been with the Hindus at the folk level for centuries perhaps for more than three thousand years.

This book asks: 1) Who was Hanuman ji? Was he a person given to deep reasoning or a simple monkey-like creature? Beliefs aboutna deity who might have been Hanuman Ji have been traced to the earliest Hindu scriptures the Rig Ved downdwards. ii) Who were the Vanars? If they were monkeys, how come their women looked like human women and did not have tails? Were the tails of the male vanars mere ornaments (bhushan)? Iii) Where was Kishkindha? Most devout Hindus believe that it was in present-day Karnataka, but the original Ramayan says that it was north of the Vindhya Range of hills. Iv) Where was Ravan’s Lanka? Was it the same as modern Sri Lanka? All the Ramayans say that it was southwest of India and a hundred yojans form the nearest peninsular shore. V) Who were the Rakshases? If they were Dravidians – and the Dravidians are a linguistic group, not a race – why did they not speak a Dravidian language? Vi) What kind of a person was Ravan, the king of the Rakshas clan? He had in the past, too, abducted women – and married them. This book looks at the good as well as evil within him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Parvez Dewan

Parvez Dewan was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and the University of Cambridge, and was elected a Visiting Research Fellow of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University. He hitchhiked through Nicaragua to study its total literacy miracle and trawled Cambodia and Central Asia for their architectural links to Kashmir's temples and shrines. An officer of the Indian Administrative Service, he is currently the Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir. Two of his libretti were recorded as rock operas in Denmark, a third was telecast on Britain's Channel Four (and none of the three was ever heard of again). At St. Stephen's he was elected President of the College Union society and was awarded the L. Raghubir singh History Prize for ranking first in his B.A. (Hons.) class. At Cambridge, he was awarded the Jennings Prize in 1987 for obtaining the highest marks, and a distinction, in the Development Studies class. He was the Senior Treasurer of the Cambridge University (C.U.) Friends of the Earth and was also with the C.U. Green Party. Most of the publications that Parvez has written for had to fold up (Youth Times, JS, The Hindustan times Evening News, The Metropolitan on Saturday, Shama (Urdu) and such sections of The Times of India as he regularly contributed to). However, some survived (notably the Times of India, India Today, The Hindustan Times, The Statesman and Stardust).