Sundara Kāṇḍa: The Messenger’s Book

Preface — A Poem You Can Walk Into

Every tradition has one text that people carry in their pockets, and for millions of Indian families that text is not the whole of the Rāmāyaṇa but a single book of it: the Sundara Kāṇḍa. It is recited on Tuesdays and Saturdays, before examinations, before surgeries, before a new shop opens, in the weeks when a family waits for news. It is the one book of Vālmīki’s epic in which the hero is not Rāma but his messenger, in which there is almost no battle until the very end, and in which the central action is a man doing a difficult job alone, in a hostile city, at night, with no backup.

I have read it for most of my life, and I have come to think of it as the finest account of professional courage that any tradition has produced. That is a strange thing to say about a sacred poem, and I do not say it to shrink the poem. Both readings are true at once. This book tries to honour both.

Inside the full e-book: the story of the fifth book in order, sarga by sarga; Hanumān’s twelve operating principles; six scenarios from small enterprise; Rāvaṇa and Sītā as characters; the symbols of the poem; the devotional tradition; other tellings; a map of the sargas; a reader’s workbook; and a 28-day reading plan.