Leaving Lanka, Lord Hanuman, untiring and full of energy, sprang up like a winged hill and began, as it were, to swim on the ocean of the sky. Clad in white, passing through cloud after cloud, he was now seen and now lost to sight, like the moon. Touching Mainaka, foremost of mountains, he sped on like an iron dart let go from a string. When from afar he saw the great mountain Mahendra, like a mass of clouds, he began to roar; and arriving there, eager to see his friends, he roared mightily and flourished his tail.1
On the northern shore of the ocean the monkeys were waiting, anxious to see the Wind-god's son, and they heard the sound of his speed like the rumbling of clouds driven by the winds. Then Jambavan, best of monkeys, said joyfully to them all that Hanuman had succeeded completely and there was no doubt of it; if he had failed, he would not be shouting like this.2
Filled with delight, the monkeys leapt up on every side. Eager to see Hanuman, they went joyfully from peak to peak; they held on to boughs at the tops of the trees and waved their clean garments. Bursting with delight, Hanuman came down near a fountain, like a hill whose wings have been clipped.3
All the principal monkeys stood around the high-souled Hanuman with joyful hearts. Hanuman saluted his elders and the aged, headed by Jambavan, and Prince Angada. Honoured by the monkeys as he well deserved, and gratified by them, he said briefly that he had seen the exalted lady.4
Taking Vali's son by the hand, he sat him down in a pleasant part of the woods on Mahendra. Then, when they asked him, he told the monkeys that he had seen Janaka's daughter, Sita, in the Asoka woods, guarded by dreadful rakshasis. At his words that he had seen her, which were like ambrosia to them, all the monkeys rejoiced. Some roared and shouted; some raised their tails in joy, and some lashed with their long and broad tails.5
When Hanuman had finished, Angada spoke among the heroic monkeys. There was none like Hanuman in strength and prowess, he said; having leapt over the wide sea and come back, he alone had given them their lives. By luck he had seen the illustrious wife of Lord Rama, and by luck Kakutstha would now put away the sorrow of his separation from Sita.6
Then the monkeys sat down on a broad rock around Angada, Hanuman and Jambavan, eager to hear of the leap over the sea and of how he had seen Lanka, Sita and Ravana. Jambavan, glad at heart, asked Hanuman about everything: how he had seen the worshipful lady, how she fared there, and how the cruel Ten-necked one bore himself towards her. When they knew the true state of things, he said, they would decide what was to be done.7
So asked, Hanuman, the hair of his body standing on end, bowed his head to the revered Sita and replied. He had leapt up in their sight, he said, with a concentrated mind, eager to reach the southern shore of the ocean; and he told them in order what had befallen him on the way and in Lanka. He told them too what Sita had said. When he asked whether he should carry her to Rama and Lakshmana on the northern shore of the ocean, she answered that Raghava himself should defeat Ravana and take her away. And when he was about to return, she asked him to tell Raghava in such a way that the heroes Rama and Lakshmana, with King Sugriva, would come at once; or else she had two months more of life, Raghava would not see her, and she would give up her life like one who has no husband.8
Hanuman ended by saying that by Rama's grace and by their prowess he had fulfilled the charge Sugriva had given him. He had told them what he had done in Lanka; it now remained for them to fulfil the rest.9