Bhima had killed Hidimba with his bare hands. He had torn the demon Baka apart and carried his whole family out of a burning house of lac. There was, as far as he knew, nothing on earth he could not lift. And then, on a mountain path in the Himalayas, he met a sick old monkey lying across the trail, and he could not move its tail by so much as an inch.
The story comes from the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, from the years of exile, and it is one of the few times in the entire epic that the strongest of the Pandavas is humbled completely, not by an enemy but by family.
A Flower on the Wind
The Pandavas had wandered deep into the northern mountains, to the slopes of Gandhamadana near Badari, where the air was thin and the forests were said to belong half to the gods. One morning a wind came down from the north-east and dropped a single flower at Draupadi’s feet.
It was a saugandhika, a golden lotus with a thousand petals, and its fragrance was unlike anything she had ever known. Draupadi picked it up, held it, and turned to Bhima. She did not ask Arjuna, or Yudhishthira. She asked the brother who never said no to her. Bring me more of these, she said. I want to take them back to our hermitage.
That was all Bhima needed. He took his mace and his bow and set off in the direction the wind had come from, crashing through the forest like a storm. He roared as he went, partly from joy and partly to scare off anything that might get in his way. Elephants fled. Lions scattered. Trees came down. Birds rose from the valleys in clouds.
The Monkey in the Banana Grove
Eventually Bhima came to a vast grove of plantain trees on the mountainside, and there, lying across the narrow path, was an enormous old monkey. It was dozing in the sun, its eyes half-closed, and its long tail was stretched right across the way, thumping lazily against the ground.
Bhima roared at it to move.
The monkey opened its eyes slowly, looked at him without much interest, and said: I am old and I am ill. I was sleeping comfortably. Why have you woken me? You look like an intelligent man. You should know it is wrong to frighten creatures who have done you no harm. And beyond this point, the path leads to the realm of the gods, where no mortal can go. Turn back. Eat some fruit if you are hungry. But turn back.
Bhima was not in a mood to be lectured by a monkey. He announced himself grandly, a Kshatriya of the Kuru line, son of Kunti, son of the Wind god, and demanded to be let through. He added that he would have simply leapt over the creature, the way Hanuman once leapt the ocean, except that the scriptures forbade stepping over a living being.
The old monkey seemed faintly amused by that. Who is this Hanuman who leapt the ocean? he asked.
Bhima told him, with considerable pride: Hanuman was his own elder brother, also a son of Vayu, the greatest of the vanaras, the one who crossed a hundred yojanas of sea for Rama. And Bhima was his equal in strength. Now get out of the way, or I’ll send you to Yama’s house.
“Just Move It Yourself”
The monkey sighed. Forgive me, I am too weak with age to get up. If you are in such a hurry, just lift my tail aside yourself and go.
Bhima laughed. He reached down with his left hand, contemptuously, to flick the tail out of the way.
It did not move.
He frowned and tried with both hands. Nothing. He planted his feet, bent his back, and pulled with the strength that had killed rakshasas and would one day break Duryodhana’s thighs. His eyebrows knotted, his eyes bulged, sweat poured down his body. He could not even raise the tail off the ground.
Finally Bhima let go, stood back in shame, and folded his hands. Who are you? he asked quietly. A siddha, a god, a gandharva? Forgive my rudeness. Tell me who you really are.
And the old monkey said: I am Hanuman, the one you were just boasting about. I am your brother.
The Form That Crossed the Ocean
What happened next is surprisingly tender. Bhima, overjoyed, embraced his elder brother, and Hanuman explained why he had stopped him: the path ahead really did lead into the world of the gods, and Bhima, charging along in his fury, would have been cursed or killed. The whole performance had been to protect him.
Bhima then made one request. Show me the form in which you crossed the sea.
Hanuman hesitated, saying that age had moved on, that the Treta Yuga was long gone and that form belonged to it. But Bhima insisted, and so Hanuman grew. He swelled until he towered like a mountain, filling the valley, as bright as a second sun. Bhima could not bear to look. He shut his eyes, and Hanuman, smiling, shrank back to his ordinary size. Even now I could grow larger than that, he said, but you would not be able to see it.
Before they parted, Hanuman spoke to Bhima at length about dharma and the four yugas, about how virtue declines age by age, and about the duties of a king. Then he offered a gift. Bhima asked for nothing but his affection. So Hanuman gave him a promise instead: when the great war came, and Bhima let loose his battle-roar on the field, Hanuman would add his own voice to it, and he would sit on the banner of Arjuna’s chariot and roar at the enemy from there.
That is why Arjuna’s chariot is called Kapidhvaja, the one with the monkey banner. At Kurukshetra, Hanuman was on it.
The Lake of Kubera
Hanuman showed Bhima the way, and Bhima went on to find the saugandhika lotuses, growing on a lake in the gardens of Kubera, guarded by a horde of rakshasas called the Krodhavashas. They told him the flowers belonged to their lord and he could not take them. Bhima, who had just been gently humbled by his brother, was not about to be told no a second time that day. He fought them, scattered them, and filled his arms with golden lotuses. Kubera, when he heard who it was, let him keep them.
But the part of the story people remember is not the lake. It is the moment the strongest man in the Mahabharata bent over an old monkey’s tail and could not lift it. The lesson Hanuman taught him had nothing to do with muscle. Bhima’s pride was the one thing that stood in the way on that path, and it took his own brother to show it to him.