Ramakien: Hanuman's adventures

At a Glance

• Central figures: Hanuman, the white monkey warrior and devotee of Phra Ram; Suvannamaccha, the mermaid daughter of Tosakanth; Phra Ram, exiled prince and rightful king; Tosakanth, the demon king of Longka.
• Setting: The Ramakien, Thailand’s national epic derived from the Ramayana tradition; the action moves across forests, seas, and the demon city of Longka, performed in the classical khon mask-dance tradition.
• The turn: Phra Ram sends Hanuman to build a causeway across the sea to Longka, and beneath the waves Suvannamaccha and her fish army tear it apart stone by stone.
• The outcome: Hanuman wins Suvannamaccha’s love, the causeway is completed, and Phra Ram’s army crosses to besiege Tosakanth’s fortress.
• The legacy: Hanuman remains the most popular figure in Thai khon performance, depicted in temple murals across Bangkok’s Wat Phra Kaew and honored as a symbol of loyalty, cunning, and fearlessness in Thai culture.

Hanuman dropped from the sky onto a rock at the edge of the sea. Behind him stood the army of Phra Ram - monkeys, bears, the commanders Sukreep and Ongkhot - waiting in the forest with no way to cross. Ahead, across miles of open water, rose the towers of Longka where Tosakanth held Nang Sida captive. The water between was deep, and Tosakanth had set guardians in it.

Phra Ram had given the order plainly: build a road across the sea. Hanuman, who had never refused Phra Ram anything, looked at the waves and began hauling boulders.

The Causeway and the Mermaid

The monkey army worked through the night. They tore rocks from the cliffs and flung them into the surf. Hanuman carried the largest stones himself, wading chest-deep, setting them in rough lines toward the horizon. By morning a ridge of stone stretched a good distance from shore.

By the next morning it was gone.

The rocks had been dragged from beneath. Hanuman dove under the surface and found the cause: thousands of fish, moving in formation, pulling the stones apart and scattering them across the seabed. And directing them was Suvannamaccha - a mermaid, half-woman half-fish, her scales flashing gold in the dark water. She was Tosakanth’s daughter, though she had never lived in Longka. She kept to the sea. Her father had sent word that an army of monkeys was building a bridge, and she was to stop it.

Hanuman surfaced, shook the water from his fur, and dove again. He caught Suvannamaccha by the wrist. She twisted free. He caught her again. This time she did not pull away. They looked at each other in the green light beneath the waves, and what passed between them was not a battle.

Hanuman spoke to her. He told her why the causeway was being built - not for conquest, but to rescue Nang Sida, who had been stolen. Suvannamaccha had not known this. She had only known her father’s command. She released the fish. She let the stones stay.

Some versions of the Ramakien say she fell in love with Hanuman that day, and he with her. Some say she bore him a son, Macchanu, who was half-monkey half-fish and who would later appear in the war. What is certain is that the causeway held. Stone by stone, the road grew across the water, and Phra Ram’s army crossed it.

The Walls of Longka

Longka was not a simple city. Tosakanth had ringed it with walls of crystal and iron, and his demon generals patrolled every gate. The siege began, and it was Hanuman who moved through it like smoke.

He was sent as a spy first. He shrank himself small - the size of a fly, some tellings say, or a bee - and entered the city through a crack in the wall. He found Nang Sida in a garden surrounded by demonesses set to guard her. She was alive. She was grieving. Hanuman revealed himself to her, showed her the ring Phra Ram had sent as proof, and told her that the army had come.

Nang Sida gave him a jewel from her hair to carry back as a sign that she lived and waited.

But Hanuman did not leave quietly. On his way out he allowed himself to be captured - deliberately, to see the inside of Tosakanth’s court. The demons bound him and dragged him before the demon king. Tosakanth sat on his throne, ten heads crowned, twenty arms resting on the armrests like a wall of limbs. He ordered Hanuman’s tail set on fire as punishment.

They wrapped his tail in oil-soaked cloth and lit it. Hanuman expanded his tail - longer, longer, coiling through the palace halls, out into the streets. The fire spread. Longka burned. Wooden buildings, market stalls, the banners on the walls. Hanuman leapt free of his bonds and bounded across the rooftops, dragging his flaming tail behind him, setting fire to half the city before he vaulted over the wall and back to Phra Ram’s camp.

He landed, singed and grinning, and handed Phra Ram the jewel from Nang Sida’s hair.

The Shape-Shifter at War

During the great battle for Longka, Hanuman fought in ways no other warrior could. He could grow to the size of a mountain or shrink to nothing. He could fly. He could change his shape. When Tosakanth’s son Indrajit used the naga arrow - a weapon that summoned serpents to bind the entire monkey army in coils - it was Hanuman who broke free first, tearing the serpent bonds apart, rallying the army back to its feet.

He fought Tosakanth’s generals one by one. He swallowed a demon whole and spat him out. He carried wounded soldiers on his back. In one episode he was sent to find a healing herb that grew on a distant mountain, and because he could not identify the right plant, he uprooted the entire mountain and carried it back.

He was not invincible. He bled. He was knocked from the sky more than once. But he always stood up, and he always went back, and Phra Ram never had to ask him twice.

After the Fall of Tosakanth

Tosakanth fell to Phra Ram’s arrow. Nang Sida was freed. The war was over.

Phra Ram offered Hanuman anything he desired. Hanuman asked for nothing. Some tellings say he asked only to remain in Phra Ram’s service. Others say Phra Ram granted him immortality, and that Hanuman still lives somewhere - in the forest, at the edge of a wat, watching from the branches.

In the murals at Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, Hanuman appears more often than any other figure. He is painted white, leaping, fighting, burning, laughing. His mask in khon performance is white with a jeweled crown, mouth open, teeth bared. He is the character the audience waits for. When Hanuman enters the khon stage, the drums shift rhythm and the whole performance lifts.

He is loyal, reckless, brilliant, crude, divine. He set a city on fire with his own tail and courted a mermaid at the bottom of the sea. The Thai Hanuman is not the Sanskrit Hanuman - he is wilder, funnier, more dangerous, more beloved. He belongs to the Ramakien the way the Ramakien belongs to Thailand: wholly, and without apology.