About that statue of Hanumat in Canada

I found out today that the new statue of Hanumat in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, is causing controversy among Hindus in India.

If you are one of the devout who are upset, please accept my sympathy. The authentic character of Hanumat is dear to me too. Of course, this statue is completely incongruous with the divine reality of our Monkey God.

Anyone with a firm foundation in Hanumad-bhakti knows, surely, that Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa is the definitive authority on who Hanumat is. Any statue that portrays Hanumat with a gadā is a contradiction of the original Rāmāyaṇa, composed contemporaneously by Vālmīki, in which Hanumat - like all of the other monkey characters - fights only with rocks, trees, and his bare hands, never with a gadā.

Seeing mistakes like this, of course I want to raise awareness and restore traditional values. However, in Canada, freedom of religion doesn't mean that one has a right to smear black on the offenders' faces, raze their house of worship to erect one's own, and yell "_____phobia!" to hide one's individual wrongdoing under the cloak of collective victimhood. Over here, my freedom to practise and share my religion implies that others are free to mock, denounce, appropriate, and reinvent my God, and I am proud to coexist with them.

So, feel free to put a loincloth on my Hanumat, who is naked in reality, thank you very much. Feel free to make him celibate in a heterosexual frame of reference, although Vālmīki didn't bother to define Hanumat's sexuality. My faith is personal and I'm secure in it.

A few years ago, I sat quietly through an abomination of a vāstu-śānti ceremony where the paṇḍita - and I use the word very loosely - announced, "Now, we invoke Lord Hanumān to bless this house!" He proceeded to say, twenty-seven times, "Oṃ Hanumate-e svāhā!" He was completely unaware that he was mispronouncing "Oṃ Anumataye svāhā!" which is a prayer to Anumati, the Vedic Goddess of Permission, by whose favour the Moon grows larger and more beautiful, and the house should do the same.

Does a vāstu-śānti not take effect when the Goddess Anumati is denied her due? Is it sacrilege to ask Hanumat to underwrite one's home insurance when Hanumat himself merely wraps his tail around whichever tree branch he hugs when he goes to sleep outdoors?

While I wait for the answers to such deep questions, I'll just enjoy the antics of my Monkey God when he mistook Mandodarī for Sītā (Rāmāyaṇa, Sundarakāṇḍa 8.50):

āsphoṭayām āsa cucumba pucchaṃ

nananda cikrīḍa jagau jagāma

stambhān arohan nipapāta bhūmau

nidarśayan svāṃ prakṛtiṃ kapīnām

He clapped, kissed his tail

Delighted, danced, chattered, scampered

Climbed pillars and dropped to the ground

Exhibiting his own monkey nature

First of all, It’s Hanuman. Not Hanumat. It looked like typo from the title but your entire post has the same mistake.

About the topic - I am not bothered. Hanuman ji gives me great sense of strength in any difficult situations, but I don’t have any issue with his statue, without his status.

Hanumat's name belongs to the Saṃskṛta language, in which any noun's sound and spelling depend on its grammatical function.

Nominative (subject of sentence) Hanumān

Accusative (direct object) Hanumantaṃ

Instrumental (action is done by) Hanumatā

Dative (indirect object) Hanumate

Ablative (subject proceeds from) Hanumataḥ

Genitive (subject belongs to) Hanumataḥ

Locative (subject is at) Hanumati

Vocative (addressing) Hanuman

The noun's original form Hanumat appears within compound words: e.g. Hanumat-kṛta (done by Hanumat), Hanumat-Toḍī (Hanumat's Toḍī Rāga), Hanumat-prabhu (Hanumat's lord) etc. Sometimes, the final t becomes d or n in conjunction with the next letter: e.g. Hanumad-bhakti (devotion to Hanumat), Hanuman-nāṭaka (Hanumat's drama) etc.

In English, it is standard and correct to use the noun in its original form Hanumat, instead of preserving these nuances.

1) Hanuman Moola Mantra (“Om Shri Hanumate Namah॥”) is one of the simplest chants anyone can recite. I can’t imagine anyone messing that up. I don’t believe any priest messed that up.

2) Valmiki Ramayana, Sundara Kanda, chapter 35, verse 27:

सिंहो यथा गजांश्चापि महाकायो महाबलः।

बलवानिव सङ्क्रुद्धो गदया चाभिदुद्रुतः।।

Translation:

Like a lion among elephants, with a colossal body and great strength, Fierce and angered, he ran forward, wielding a mace.

Rest of the post, I am sorry to say, is deceptively disconnected from the Brampton statue IMO.

1. The mantra that you know is not part of a vāstu-śānti. The Vedic mantra invoking Anumati got mispronounced because the poorly trained paṇḍita thought it was for Hanumat.

2. Rāmāyaṇa, Sundarakāṇḍa 35.27 is:

कथयन्तीव चन्द्रेण सूर्येणेव सुवर्चला

मत्पृष्ठमधिरुह्य त्वं तराकाशमहार्णवम्

The śloka that you cited cannot be found anywhere in the searchable digitized text of Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa (critical edition). Not even when I search for short phrases of it in all seven kāṇḍas. Searching the internet for these phrases also turns up nothing. Your śloka doesn't identify who is wielding a gadā; what makes you think it's one of the monkeys?

I only have access to a translation in print version and (obviously) not the original text. The verse numbers depending on the edition could be off.

How about Yuddha kanda? Could you find these verses? BTW, it takes a lot to type in Devanagiiri:

तेजः प्रसृतमायान्तं सदृशं गगनोत्तमम्।

आरोप्य हनुमान् बाणं समरे विदधे गदाम्।।

Translation: “Radiant as the outspread sky, Hanuman, in the battle, lifted and wielded his mace, like lifting a thunderbolt.

बाणैः पातितबाहुक्षोभाभिद्रूपेण समुत्थितः।

तेजोवान् गदया हनुमान् निराकृष्यत मारुतिः।।

Translation: “With arrows striking his arms, Hanuman, like the wind, swelled with rage and drew his mace, shining brightly.

I don’t claim expertise in Sanskrit ani and incapable of coming up with Shlokas on my own.

In any case, why are we questioning Hanuman’s dexterity with a mace? Either we believe the entire epic or we believe none o it, right? Treta yuga is not exactly a history connected to Kali yuga?

Neither of those two verses can be found in the digitized critical edition of Yuddhakāṇḍa.

In Yuddhakāṇḍa, the characters who wield a gadā are all Rākṣasas: Vibhīṣaṇa (10.12, 15.27, 32.23, 39.31, 40.7, 88.17), Indrajit (33.18, 60.41), Vidyunmālin (33.37, 33.39), Dhūmrākṣa (42.27, 42.32-34), Kumbhakarṇa (51.42, 55.5, 55.80), Mahāpārśva (57.31, 58.44-47, 58.49-50), Atikāya (59.103), Kampana (63.2), Mahodara (85.14-16, 85.18), Rāvaṇa (88.3, 95.17, 96.15, 96.29), and other unnamed Rākṣasas (32.28, 41.24, 42.5, 43.22, 46.3, 48.32-33, 60.11, 62.9, 62.40, 66.4, 73.21, 81.8, 81.13, 82.2).

The monkeys fight using trees, rocks, hilltops, and their fists, claws, and teeth, except when they and the Rākṣasas are mentioned together as using weapons, trees, and rocks to "strike each other" because the monkeys explicitly pick up off the ground whatever weapons the Rākṣasas have thrown at them. For example, the monkey Ṛṣabha uses Mahāpārśva's own gadā to kill him (58.52-53).

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

In any case, why are we questioning Hanuman’s dexterity with a mace? Either we believe the entire epic or we believe none o it, right? Treta yuga is not exactly a history connected to Kali yuga?

Freedom of religion is like a cafeteria where everyone decides which portions to consume. I can accept that Rāmāyaṇa is written in stages, full of interpolations, and not historical, and still insist (only if I want to) that Hanumat as delineated by Vālmīki exists on some divine level, without the gadā and loincloth that make him too anthropomorphic (or Rākṣasa-morphic) in art. Likewise, you are free to believe in interpolations and imagine an inauthentic Hanumat.

By the way, if you had the ability to make up Saṃskṛta ślokas and pass them off as Rāmāyaṇa quotes, or you used artificial intelligence to do so, I wouldn't think less of you.

Of course people have the right to think freely, and to entertain ideas and hold positions based on conscientious or religious or other beliefs. I am only countering your claim to authenticity by submitting slokas from the very Valmiki Ramayan to which you have subscribed.

For example, in Sundara Kanda, Valmiki described that Hanuman, during his search for Sita, assumed a humble appearance:

उपवीतं च तुच्छाभूमिः पद्मपत्रविशेषकम्।

सर्वाङ्गुल्यगुणोपेतं नित्यमन्त्रविशारदम्।

Translation: “He wore a simple loincloth, made of jute, resembling a lotus leaf. His body was adorned with the marks of all five fingers, and he was always proficient in the use of sacred mantras”

If these slokas are not available online or in e-text, doesn’t mean they don’t exist or were interpolated. I assume we are all relying on some translation or other of Valmiki Ramayan.

I am not relying on any translation. I am reading the original Saṃskṛta text.

The e-text is far from perfect, with typos and incorrectly split words everywhere. However, it is a complete transcript of the critical edition of Rāmāyaṇa, searchable in both Devanāgarī and Roman alphabets. If it contained any phrases from your verses, I would find them and check them against the printed critical edition on my bookshelf, which has manuscript variants noted in footnotes.

You wrote, "I only have access to a translation in print version and (obviously) not the original text." So, where are you getting the verses that you're typing into posts? They have terrible syntax, violations of metre, nonsense compounds, and a few unintelligible words. The English translations and their putative Saṃskṛta originals don't match very well.

Originally posted by: BrhannadaArmour

I am not relying on any translation. I am reading the original Saṃskṛta text.

So, where are you getting the verses that you're typing into …

Stotranidhi in paperback. JM publications, Hyderabad.