Hanuman Jayanti 2029in Karimnagar

Hanuman Jayanti — the birth of the chiranjivi Hanuman, son of Anjana and Kesari and conceived by the grace of Vayu — is observed across India on different days by different sampradayas. North India keeps it on Chaitra Purnima; Tamil Nadu and Kerala on the day of the Moola nakshatra in Margashirsha (December-January); Karnataka and Andhra on Vaishakha Krishna Dashami; Odisha on Vaishakha Purnima. The Valmiki Ramayana, the Anjaneya-Charitra, and the Skanda Purana together carry the story, and the Hanuman Chalisa of Tulsidas summarises it.

Anjana, before her birth as a vanara mother on earth, was an apsara named Punjikasthala in Indra's court. She had been cursed by the rishi Agastya, whose meditation she had once mocked, to be born as a vanara woman; the curse could be lifted only by giving birth to a son who would embody Vishnu's servant-companion in his coming Rama avatara. She married Kesari, the vanara chieftain of the Sumeru region. Many years of childless prayer passed. Anjana finally went to Mount Anjanadri — the hill that bears her name — and observed a long tapas; the Vayu Purana describes her standing on one leg through summer, monsoon, and winter, with no food beyond fallen leaves.

At the same time, Dasharatha was performing his Putrakameshti yajna at Ayodhya for Rama. The Vishnu in the fire-being who delivered the payasa to the three queens left a small remainder of the porridge ungiven; a kite (gandharvika in some texts, an eagle in others) carried this remainder away in its beak. Vayu, blowing through the forest where Anjana stood in her vow, guided the bird overhead and let the drop of payasa fall into her open palms held up in prayer. She drank it. From that drop, with the breath of Vayu carrying Vishnu's portion to her womb, Hanuman was conceived — and was therefore born of three: of Anjana, of Kesari, and of Vayu who brought him.

The Skanda Purana describes the infant's first days. Hanuman was born hungry — the curse on his mother had bound her shakti, and now her son had to live for many. One morning when Anjana had gone to gather food, the infant Hanuman saw the rising sun and, taking it for a great ripe mango, leapt for it. The leap of a child from earth to the orbit of the Sun is a moment the texts return to again and again — it sets the scale of his physical greatness. As the infant approached, the Sun grew alarmed and called for help. Indra rode out on Airavata to intercept and struck the child between the jaws with his vajra; Hanuman fell unconscious onto a mountain — the mountain Anjanadri itself — and his lower jaw was broken (the name Hanu-man means "one of the broken jaw"). Vayu, finding his son struck down, drew in his breath in grief and ceased to move; the winds stopped across all worlds, and beings of every loka began to suffocate. The devas, alarmed, came to where Vayu sat with the child and offered every blessing they could give to restore the boy and persuade his father to breathe again. Brahma granted him invulnerability from his own weapon and from death by curse. Indra granted him invulnerability from the vajra. Yama granted him deathlessness. Surya gave him a hundredth of his own brilliance. Varuna granted him immunity from water. Agni from fire. Vayu himself restored him and granted him the speed and strength of the wind. The combined boons made Hanuman a chiranjivi — one of seven beings who do not die through the kalpas — and laid the groundwork for his service in the coming Rama avatara.

A second curse weighed on him. The boy's powers, given by so many devas at once, were too great for any childhood; in his exuberance he disturbed the meditations of many rishis. The sages cursed him — gently, with the dharmic purpose of preserving the world — to forget the full extent of his own powers, to remember them only when someone reminded him at the moment of his need. This curse is why, throughout the Sundara Kanda, Hanuman has to be reminded by Jambavan that he can leap the ocean before he attempts it; the moment he is told what he can do, the curse is lifted and he does it. The forgetting is itself a teaching — that great power, even when divinely bestowed, becomes truly available only when one is called to use it for another and is reminded of it by another.

Hanuman's lifetime service to Rama and Sita, his finding of Sita in Ashoka Vatika at Lanka, his burning of Lanka with his tail, his carrying of the Sanjivani mountain back from the Himalayas to revive a dying Lakshmana, his role as messenger and warrior in the great battle — all of these are written in the Ramayana. He is then said to have been promised by Rama himself that as long as the name of Rama was sung in any of the worlds, Hanuman would remain in those worlds, listening. He is therefore considered present at every Ramayana recital, every Hanuman Chalisa, every bhajan. The festival is observed by reading the Hanuman Chalisa eleven or one hundred and eight times, by offering sindoor and oil to his idol (sindoor because Sita is said to have once explained to him that married women wore it for their husband's long life; the next day Hanuman covered his entire body in sindoor for Rama), and by long temple processions. The most-observed ritual is no ritual at all — a simple, silent recitation of his name in moments of fear, in which the curse is again gently lifted and the strength he holds in reserve is again, simply, made available.