Was Hanuman a monkey?

Hanuman isn’t a monkey. Here’s the tea.

There are actually many versions of the Ramayan, with the 2 major ones being Valmiki Ramayan, written in Sanskrit in 500-1000 BCE & the Tulsidas Ramayan written in the locally accessible Avadhi language around the 16th century.

Valmiki is more detailed, highly philosophical & logically realistic, while the second is more of a devotional & story-focused love letter to the OG one but neither are fully wrong because of the concept of kalpa bhed i.e. the Hindu multiverse theory, which I’ll explain later.

In Valmiki’s version, the word vanar is actually extended to i.e. forest dwelling tribes of humans who wore face masks & tails.

They had adapted to the behaviors of monkeys like climbing trees & being fast on their feet, which is why poetic words like plavangam, shakamriga & kapi are used to describe them. Bibhishan confirms that they could change between their natural (human) & specialized tribal forms.

In the Balkand chapter, you also see many other tribes like the nagas & rikshas which worshipped snakes & bears respectively, which is where Jambhuvan comes from.

Valmiki clearly states that the vanaras were expert statesmen like city dwellers, with expertise in agriculture & construction, which came in handy to build the setu or Lanka ocean bridge.

Although Hanuman did have special powers, is a God & has his own origin story - he defo wasn’t a literal monkey but possibly another version, tribe or sub-species of human.

If you really want to understand the real Ramayan, screw your Netflix & binge on this channel called 21Notes because it’ll blow your mind.