100 word story
As Rama took the throne, he could not forget his loyal follower, Hanuman. The powerful monkey deity had saved his brother, wife, and aided in the war effort. For all he had done, Rama must surely reward Hanuman greatly. He remembered the great mountain that Hanuman had seized to bring the medicine fruit to bring back his slain soldiers and brother. Thus, Rama decided Hanuman shall became the king of the Himalayas so that he may protect India from invaders and watch over the medicine plant for Rama. Upon hearing the news Hanuman, flew to begin his kingdom.
Two sentence story
Rama was proud of Hanuman's effort in the battle and decided to reward him. Hanuman thus became the king of the Himalayas to forever grow the medicine plant and guard against invaders.
Bilbiography: Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists by Sister Nivedita (1914)
Author's Note: One of my favorite parts of Ramayana was the role of Hanuman. His loyalty, wit, and courage was admirable, and I wanted to include a part where he was rewarded at the end. While there already was a monkey king, I felt that Hanuman could be the perfect ruler of the mountain he transported to save Lakshmana. As such, he would rule the mountain to preserve the plant and continue to remain a loyal servant of Rama, protecting him from Northern enemies.
Oh, this is a very nice experiment, Neal: I really like how you used third-person here but kept us very much inside Rama's point of view. That's really nice because often the focus is on Hanuman's devotion to Rama (a big part of Hanuman's role in the Ramayana is to model just what devotion looks like, and we are often seeing Rama through Hanuman's eyes), but here you've flipped that, seeing Hanuman through Rama's eyes, which I really like! If you are curious about some of the folklore legends associated with the Medicine Mountain (one of the BEST Hanuman episodes for sure), there is a comic book in Bizzell all about that: Hanuman to the Rescue: Hanuman Brings the Sanjeevani link. And for your project purposes, you might ponder this nifty twist: many people consider Hanuman to be an incarnation or manifestation of Shiva (!!!), and there are some cool legends about Hanuman and Shiva, like this one: Shiva and the Dancing Monkey link
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