The story

The strongest man in the epic met someone stronger lying across a mountain path, too old, he said, to get up.

The Pandavas had come north on their pilgrimage to the hermitage of Nara and Narayana at Badari, to wait for Arjuna's return from Indra's heaven. One day a north-east wind dropped a single lotus before Draupadi: a saugandhika, the fragrant lotus, thousand-petalled and bright as the sun. She would give this one to Yudhishthira, she told Bhima, and if he loved her he would bring her many more to take back to Kamyaka.

Bhima did not ask anyone's leave. He took his bow and climbed the Gandhamadana mountain into the wind that had brought the flower, and the wind, his father Vayu, cooled him as he went. With Arjuna away, he reasoned, Yudhishthira would never send the twins, so he went alone, and fast. He tore up a grove of banana trees, killed the lions and elephants that came at him, and blew his conch until the caves echoed.

The noise woke a monkey asleep in the banana grove. He was tawny and bright as lightning, his tail raised like a banner. He half-opened his eyes, looked at Bhima with some contempt, and asked why a sick creature had been woken. Men are supposed to show kindness to living things, he said, yet here was one slaughtering the forest's animals. The way ahead was closed to humans. Bhima should eat some fruit and go home.

Bhima gave his name and lineage — a Kuru, a son of Kunti, born of the Wind — and told the monkey to move. The monkey said he was too ill to rise; Bhima could step over him. Bhima refused. The Supreme, he said, dwells in every body, so he would not insult it by leaping over one. Otherwise he would jump the monkey and the mountain together, the way Hanuman had jumped the ocean. Hanuman was his brother, he added, famous in the Ramayana, and he himself was Hanuman's equal in strength.

Too old to get up, the monkey said; move my tail aside and pass.

Bhima took it carelessly in his left hand and could not move it. He took it in both hands, his eyes rolling and his body running with sweat, and the tail did not rise. He stood there with his face lowered in shame, then bowed, asked pardon, and asked who the monkey really was.

He was Hanuman, born to the Wind in the field of the monkey Kesarin. He told the story briefly: Sugriva's exile, Rama's search for Sita, his own leap across the hundred leagues of sea. Afterwards he asked Rama to let him live as long as Rama's story was told in the world, and Rama granted it. Here the apsaras and gandharvas sing that story to him. He had blocked the path to protect Bhima. It was a road of the gods, and a human on it might be harmed or cursed. The lake Bhima wanted was near.

Bhima asked to see the form that had crossed the ocean. No one could see it now, Hanuman said, because the age had changed. Strength and stature rise and fall with the yugas, the four ages of the world, and he explained them, down to the present age of decline. Bhima would not leave without seeing it. So Hanuman grew until he filled the banana grove and stood level with the mountain, tail sweeping every direction, and Bhima had to close his eyes. This much, Hanuman said, was all Bhima could bear to see.

Why, Bhima asked, had Rama faced Ravana himself, when Hanuman alone could have destroyed Lanka? Because, Hanuman said, Rama's fame would have been lost. Then he taught his brother dharma: a kshatriya's duty to protect, a king's need for wise counsel, punishment justly applied. And he gave one direct instruction: do not take the flowers by force, but honour the gods who guard them.

Hanuman shrank back and embraced him, and all Bhima's tiredness left him. With tears in his eyes the old monkey said that touching a human body had reminded him of Rama. He offered to go and kill the sons of Dhritarashtra, or crush Hastinapura with a rock. Bhima said Hanuman had already done everything for him. So Hanuman made a promise instead. When Bhima roared in battle, Hanuman would swell the roar with his own voice, and he would sit on Arjuna's banner and roar at the enemy. He asked Bhima to tell no one where he lived, and vanished.

Bhima found the lotus pool. It belonged to Kubera, lord of wealth, and its rakshasa guards told him to ask their master's leave. Kings do not beg, Bhima said, and he waded in. He scattered the guards with his mace, and Kubera, when they complained, only laughed and let him take the flowers. His brothers arrived to find him on the bank, mace raised. Yudhishthira embraced him and told him that rashness displeases even the gods, and that if he loved his brother he would not do this again.

The episode gives Bhima something no other brother receives in the forest: kinship with a hero of the older epic, and a promise that his own voice will be louder in the war. It also shows him as he is: devout, boastful, open to correction, and quick to forget it. When the war books describe the ape on Arjuna's banner, this is the promise behind it.

Who appears, and what it argues

• Bhima — The strongest of the brothers, whose two vows in the assembly hall turn a property dispute into something that can only end in bodies.
• Draupadi — Won in a contest she had no say in, married to five men on a careless word, and the only person in the hall who asks a question of law.
• Yudhishthira — The eldest Pandava, called the king of dharma, who gambles away his brothers, his wife and himself without anyone forcing his hand.
• Theme: Kinship and enmity
• Theme: The king's duty

Elsewhere in this parva

• Arjuna and the hunter — Arjuna starves himself for four months to meet Shiva, and the god comes as a hunter who beats him senseless before giving him his weapon.
• Nala and Damayanti — A sage consoles a king who lost everything at dice with the story of another who did, and then teaches him the dice.
• The cattle expedition — Duryodhana rides out to mock his cousins in exile, is captured by gandharvas, and is freed by the Pandavas, which he cannot forgive.
• The abduction of Draupadi — Jayadratha carries Draupadi off from the forest, leaves with five tufts of hair and a slave's oath, and goes to Shiva for revenge
• Savitri and Satyavan — A princess marries a man fated to die within the year, follows Death into the forest, and talks him out of her husband
• Karna's earrings — Warned in a dream by the Sun, Karna sees through Indra's disguise and still cuts off the armour that made him unkillable
• The yaksha's questions — Four brothers drink before answering and fall beside the lake, and the fifth is asked what a man must be before he may drink

Questions to explore

• Why are Bhima and Hanuman called brothers?
• Why does Hanuman refuse at first to show Bhima the form in which he crossed the ocean?
• What does Hanuman promise Bhima for the war?