The war was won and Rama was enthroned at Ayodhya, and the court was full of gifts. Sita gave Hanuman a necklace of magnificent pearls. The court then watched, puzzled and then offended, as he took each pearl between his teeth, cracked it open, looked inside, and threw it away.

Asked what he was doing, he said he was looking to see whether Rama and Sita were inside; anything that did not contain them was of no use to him. A courtier asked, mockingly, whether Hanuman himself contained them, since he claimed to value only what did.

Hanuman did not argue. He put his hands to his own chest and tore it open, and there, in his heart, the whole court saw Rama and Sita seated together. No one spoke. It is the image carved and painted more than almost any other in India: the servant who kept his lord not in a shrine but in his own body.

The Moral

The court laughs at a literal-minded monkey and is answered with the most extreme literalism in scripture, which turns out not to be literalism at all. Hanuman is not testing pearls; he is stating a standard: whatever does not carry the beloved inside it is worthless to him. And when challenged he does not defend himself with words. He opens himself. Devotion, this story says, is finally not something you profess. It is something that can be found in you if anyone looks.

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