qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
You put your Lord's ring inside your mouth — the ring that would tell Sita who had sent you —
and you went straight over the sea. And there is nothing to be astonished at in that.
Mudrikā is from mudrā, a seal or stamp: a signet, the ring that presses a mark nobody else can press. It is a credential before it is a keepsake, and that is exactly the work it does when he reaches Laṅkā. Sītā is in a city of rākṣasas who take whatever shape suits them, and has been lied to in several of those shapes. A thing that cannot be counterfeited is what she needs, and a ring is what she gets.
Mukha māhīṃ — in the mouth. The detail is practical before it is anything else: the hands are needed for the leap and the sea is underneath the whole way. It also puts him across the water unable to say a word, carrying someone else's name in the one place he would use for his own.
Jaladhi is a compound, water-holder, one of the many names the ocean has. Lā̃ghnā is to step over — the everyday verb for a threshold, a puddle, a line on the ground. The poem uses the small word for the enormous act.
Then acaraja nāhīṃ: no wonder. The single most famous thing Hanumān ever did is given half a line and immediately declined as a marvel. It can be declined because of what has just been said four chaupais earlier — a poem that has watched Brahmā and Śeṣa and speech herself fail to finish praising him is not going to be surprised by a sea. The astonishment has been spent in advance, on purpose.
This leap opens the Sundar Kāṇḍ, the book of the Rāmcaritmānas that many households recite on its own, apart from the rest.
If you had to get a message to someone who would not believe it came from you, what would you send with it so they knew?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made