Grief-stricken, Rama and Lakshmana journeyed south in search of Sita and entered into alliance with the vanaras, the forest-dwelling monkey people. Having helped the exiled monkey-prince Sugriva regain his throne, Rama gained an army — and among them one who would become the most beloved figure in the whole epic: Hanuman, son of the wind-god Vayu, a being of boundless strength, intellect, and devotion.

Search parties scoured the directions. It was the southern party, guided at last by the aged vulture Sampati (brother of the fallen Jatayu), that learned the truth: Sita was held across the sea, on the island fortress of Lanka, Ravana's golden city. But a hundred yojanas of ocean lay between. The monkeys despaired. None among them could cross it.

Here the tradition tells a tender thing. Hanuman, mightiest of all, did not know his own power. As a mischievous child he had once leapt at the sun, mistaking it for a fruit, and the sages — to curb his unruly strength — had laid on him a gentle curse of forgetting: he would not recall his own greatness until another reminded him of it. Now the bear-king Jambavan spoke, recounting to Hanuman his divine birth and limitless might. As the words landed, Hanuman remembered. He swelled to the size of a mountain, climbed the peak of Mahendra, and sprang into the air.

The Sundara Kanda, the "Beautiful Book" devoted to this flight, describes the leap in soaring verse — Hanuman crossing the sky, brushing clouds, refusing the temptations and tests sent to delay him, until he alighted on Lanka's shore. Shrinking himself to the size of a cat, he stole through the marvellous, terrible city by night and at last found Sita in the Ashoka grove, wasted with sorrow, surrounded by demon-guards yet unbroken in her faithfulness, refusing Ravana's every demand.

Hanuman revealed himself gently, lest he frighten her, and gave her Rama's signet ring as proof. Sita, who had been ready to end her own life, wept with the first joy she had known in captivity. She gave Hanuman her own jewel, the chudamani, to carry back. Before leaving, Hanuman let himself be captured, allowed Ravana to set his tail aflame, and then — burning — bounded across the rooftops and set the golden city alight, a warning of the storm to come.