Editing Hanuman (section)

=== Buddhism ===
Hanuman appears in [[Tibetan Buddhism]] (southwest China) and [[Kingdom of Khotan|Khotanese]] (west China, central Asia and northern Iran) versions of Ramayana. The Khotanese versions have a [[Jātaka]] tales-like theme but are generally similar to the Hindu texts in the storyline of Hanuman. The Tibetan version is more embellished, and without attempts to reference the Jātakas. Also, in the Tibetan version, novel elements appear such as Hanuman carrying love letters between Rama and Sita, in addition to the Hindu version wherein Rama sends the wedding ring with him as a message to Sita. Further, in the Tibetan version, Rama chides Hanuman for not corresponding with him through letters more often, implying that the monkey-messenger and warrior is a learned being who can read and write.<ref name=whitfield212>{{cite book|author1=Susan Whitfield|author-link=Susan Whitfield|author2=Ursula Sims-Williams|title=The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ArWLD4Qop38C&pg=PA212 |year=2004|publisher=Serindia Publications |isbn=978-1-932476-13-2|page=212}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=J. L. Brockington|title=Righteous Rāma: The Evolution of an Epic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-QFkAAAAMAAJ|year=1985|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-815463-1|pages=264–267, 283–284, 300–303, 312 with footnotes}}</ref>

[[File:Hie Shrine Saru-gami.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|In Japan, icons of the divine monkey (Saruta Biko), guarding temples such as Saru-gami at [[Hie Shrine]].{{sfn|Lutgendorf|2007|pp=353–354}}<ref name=ohnuki42>{{cite book|author=Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney|title=The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gBKI6BKx0sYC&pg=PA42 |year=1989|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-02846-0|pages=42–54}}</ref>]]
In the Sri Lankan versions of Ramayana, which are titled after Ravana, the story is less melodramatic than the Indian stories. Many of the legends recounting Hanuman's bravery and innovative ability are found in the Sinhala versions. The stories in which the figures are involved have Buddhist themes, and lack the embedded ethics and values structure according to Hindu dharma.<ref name="Holt2005">{{cite book|author=John C. Holt|title=The Buddhist Visnu: Religious Transformation, Politics, and Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HYUqsYbLP6QC |year=2005|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-50814-8|pages=138–140}}</ref> According to Hera Walker, some Sinhalese communities seek the aid of Hanuman through prayers to his mother.<ref>{{cite book|author=Hera S. Walker|title=Indigenous Or Foreign?: A Look at the Origins of the Monkey Hero Sun Wukong, Sino-Platonic Papers, Issues 81–87|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=ulxkAAAAMAAJ|year= 1998|publisher= University of Pennsylvania|page= 45}}</ref> In Chinese Buddhist texts, states Arthur Cotterall, myths mention the meeting of the Buddha with Hanuman, as well as Hanuman's great triumphs.<ref>{{cite book|author=Arthur Cotterall|title=The Pimlico Dictionary of Classical Mythologies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0TvCkXvnV6EC&pg=PT45|year=2012|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-1-4481-2996-6|page=45}}</ref> According to Rosalind Lefeber, the arrival of Hanuman in East Asian Buddhist texts may trace its roots to the translation of the Ramayana into Chinese and Tibetan in the 6th-century CE.<ref>{{cite book|author=Rosalind Lefeber|title=The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India-Kiskindhakanda|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BJMWT0ZJYHAC&pg=PA30 |year=1994|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-06661-5|pages=29–31}}</ref>

In both China and Japan, much like in India, there is a lack of a radical divide between humans and animals, with all living beings and nature assumed to be related to humans. There is no exaltation of humans over animals or nature, unlike the Western traditions. A divine monkey has been a part of the historic literature and culture of China and Japan, possibly influenced by the close cultural contact through Buddhist monks and pilgrimage to India over two millennia.{{sfn|Lutgendorf|2007|pp=353–354}} For example, the Japanese text ''Keiranshuyoshu'', while presenting its mythology about a divine monkey, that is the theriomorphic [[Shinto]] emblem of [[Hie Shrine|Hie]] shrines, describes a flying white monkey that carries a mountain from India to China, then from China to Japan.<ref>{{cite book|author=Richard Karl Payne|title=Re-Visioning "Kamakura" Buddhism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w5nJT5NYvn4C&pg=PA65| year= 1998|publisher= University of Hawaii Press|isbn= 978-0-8248-2078-7|pages=65–66}}</ref> This story is based on a passage in the Ramayana where the wounded hero asks Hanuman to bring a certain herbal medicine from the Himalayas. As Hanuman does not know the herb he brings the entire mountain for the hero to choose from. By that time a learned medicine man from Lanka discovered the cure and Hanuman brings the mountain back to where he got it from.
Many Japanese [[Shinto]] shrines and village boundaries, dated from the 8th to the 14th centuries, feature a monkey deity as guardian or intermediary between humans and gods (kami).{{sfn|Lutgendorf|2007|pp=353–354}}<ref name=ohnuki42/>

The Jātaka tales contain Hanuman-like stories.{{sfn|Lutgendorf|2007|pp=38–41}} For example, the Buddha is described as a monkey-king in one of his earlier births in the ''Mahakapi Jātaka'', wherein he as a compassionate monkey suffers and is abused, but who nevertheless continues to follow [[dharma]] in helping a human being who is lost and in danger.<ref>{{cite book|author=Peter D. Hershock|title=Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N_2SAgAAQBAJ |year=2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-98674-2|page=18}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Reiko Ohnuma|title=Unfortunate Destiny: Animals in the Indian Buddhist Imagination|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ci7ADgAAQBAJ |year=2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-063755-2|pages=80–81}}</ref>

Various scholars have suggested that Hanuman may have influenced the conception of [[Sun WuKong|Sun Wukong]], the central figure in the Chinese epic ''[[Journey to the West]]''.<ref name="hanuman">Wendy Doniger, [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hanuman Hanuman: Hindu mythology] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220415082224/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hanuman|date=15 April 2022}}, Encyclopaedia Britannica; For a summary of the Chinese text, see [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xiyouji Xiyouji: Novel by Wu Cheng'En]</ref><ref>H. S. Walker (1998), [https://telugustotram.com/wp-content/uploads/files/indegenous_foreign_monkey_sun_wukong_.pdf Indigenous or Foreign? A Look at the Origins of the Monkey Hero Sun Wukong], Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 81. September 1998, Editor: [[Victor H. Mair]], University of Pennsylvania</ref>