Rama, Lakshmana, and Hanuman

This scene takes place during Rama’s fourteen-year exile from the court at Ayodhya, when he wandered in the forests of southern India accompanied by his brother Lakshmana. Upon meeting this royal party, the monkey-general Hanuman prostrates himself at Rama’s feet. The moment is drawn from a couplet in the Ramacharitmanas, a sixteenth-century epic poem by the devotee Tulsidas. Tulsidas chose to write in Awadhi, a language local to Rama’s home state of Uttar Pradesh and his home city of Ayodhya, rather than in Sanskrit as was expected for a man of high learning. The relevant verse, reproduced on the lower margin of the print, translates as, “On recognizing his lord, he fell at his feet. The bliss that he felt, Uma, is indescribable!”