Having seen Sita nowhere Hanuman started entertaining negative thoughts in his mind.
Valmiki beautifully brings
out the feelings of a person when his sincere attempts fail to bring fruit.
Reading Hanuman’s thought process we can realize how true it is to go through
such mental torture. Even though Hanuman was a very brilliant and courageous
person always ready with resources still he was not spared such depressive
moods.
Hanuman started fearing that
Sita perhaps was dead because she could not endure being a prisoner of Ravana
or she might have been frightened by the rakshasis who guarded her, which she
was unable to bare. He wondered how he could ever go and face Sugreeva without
finding Sita or carrying bad news. This kind of mental state was only for a
short while because he regained his enthusiasm and started his search again
more intensely and in every nook and corner, in all the gardens, in the woods, and so on. Valmiki says that he searched also in the Memorial buildings.
This is an interesting piece of information that even in those times too there were buildings erected in memory of someone! In whose memory those buildings were built is an open question since Valmiki does not mention anything about this. Hanuman saw many beautiful ladies (Vidhyadharas) but not Sita Devi.
Hanuman again got dejected
and he said to himself what use was all the crossing of the sea a feat that
he had performed. He began to think that Sita was not in Lanka. Yet Sampati had
told that Sita was kept by Ravana in Lanka. Suddenly a thought crossed his
mind. Sita probably fell from the sky slipping from the hands of Ravana while
he was carrying her. Or was Sita so scared of looking at the sea that her heart
stopped beating? Or did Ravana eat her. Thus he reflected on how he could tell
Rama that Sita was no more in Lanka. He thought that Rama would certainly be
unable to bear the news and die. In that case, he was sure that both Lakshmana
and Sugreeva too would kill themselves. Finally, he thought the whole royal
family in Ayodhya would not like to live after such a tragedy. So he thought it
would be better that he never returned from Lanka at all and lose his life by
either entering the fire or fasting unto death. Hanuman again thought that he
would kill Ravana who was responsible for all this.
Valmiki has analyzed so well what would cross the mind of a person in such a state.
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