Full · 6 min aloud
After the war was over, after was crowned and the city had stopped celebrating and everyone had gone home to their own lives, went up into the mountains by himself.
He had been in the story. He had crossed the sea for it, walked into a burning city and out again, and carried the news that she was alive.
And now it was over, and he wanted to write it down. Not for anybody. Just written down once, the way it had been.
He had no paper and no ink and nothing to make them from, so he used what was there. He wrote on the rock faces of the mountain, cutting the letters with his nails, one line at a time.
It took years, and nobody was watching him do it. When he finished, the whole thing stood along the mountainside in the open air, where there was nobody to read it.
Then came up the mountain.
Vālmīki was writing a of his own — the one we have, the one every telling since has come from, including this one. He had heard there was another, and came to see it.
He walked along the rock face reading it, beginning to end. Then he sat down on one of the stones and said nothing at all.
Because Hanumān's was better.
The story is not interested in explaining how. It does not say Hanumān had a better ear, or knew things Vālmīki could not have known. It says only that Vālmīki read it and knew, the way you know, and that he could not get up off the stone afterwards.
Hanumān waited a while, and then asked him what was wrong.
Understand what Vālmīki had put in. Years of it. He had found the metre for it and then built the whole thing inside that metre, line after line, and he had done it well enough that we still have every word.
And Vālmīki told him, which took some getting out. If this one existed, nobody was going to read his. Not out of unfairness. Just because people read the better one.
Hanumān stood up and started gathering the rocks.
All of them. Every slab, all those years of them, stacked and carried in armfuls to the edge of the mountain. And then he threw the whole thing into the sea.
Vālmīki ran after him shouting. What have you done?
And Hanumān said — this is the part of the story people remember — that he had not written it for readers. He had written it for Rāma. It was finished the moment it was finished. It had already done every single thing it was for, and being read was never one of them.
Vālmīki went back down the mountain and wrote his. It is what we have. It is a great poem, and it is the one this whole collection comes out of — and it is the one we have partly because somebody decided it should be.
That washed-up piece is the last part of the story, and it is a good one.
An age afterwards — long enough that the war had become something people only had poems about — a broken stone with writing on it came out of the sea.
A trader found it. It was carried inland to a king called , and he read a line of it standing there and knew exactly what he was holding.
Most of it was gone. He gave what was left to a poet at his court and told him to make something of it, and the poet did, and that is the play.
So a piece of the thing Hanumān threw away came back as a play, most of it missing, finished by somebody else, an age too late to matter to him.
slow down hereHe gave away the best thing he ever made and did not appear to feel it as a loss.
Short · 3 min aloud
After the war was over, after was king and everyone had gone home to their own lives, went up into the mountains by himself.
He had been in the story. He had crossed the sea for it and carried the news back. Now he wanted to write it down — not for anyone, just written down, the way it had been.
He had no paper and no ink. So he wrote it on the rocks, with his nails, one line at a time, and it took him years.
And came up the mountain to read it.
Vālmīki was writing a too. His is the one we have. His is the one everybody has.
He walked along the rock face, reading. When he got to the end he sat down on one of the stones and did not say anything for a long time.
Because Hanumān's was better.
The story does not explain how. It just says he read it, and knew, and could not get up.
Hanumān watched his face and asked what was wrong. And Vālmīki said the true thing, which was a hard thing to say out loud: that now nobody would ever read his.
So Hanumān got up. He gathered the rocks — all of them, all those years of them — carried them to the edge of the mountain, and threw them into the sea.
Vālmīki shouted at him. What have you done?
And Hanumān said he had not written it for readers. He had written it for Rāma. It was finished the moment it was finished, and it had already done everything it was for.
The Rāmāyaṇa people have been reading ever since is Vālmīki's, and it is a great poem, and it is the one we have partly because Hanumān wanted it that way.
slow down hereThe strongest one in the story turned out to be strong about something else entirely.