Monkey in the Middle: The Status of Hanuman in Popular Hinduism

The title is taken from an old children's game wherein two players toss a ball back and forth, while a third—the ‘monkey’ or ‘it’—standing between them tries to intercept it. A successful interception frees the ‘monkey’ to replace one of the tossers. In a more agonistic variation (reported to me by Lyone Fein, who learned it in Brownie Scouts) the object of the two main players or teams is to strike the hapless ‘monkey’, who must repeatedly dodge their throws. The game structure thus points, as do certain common English idioms (e.g. to ‘make a monkey of’ someone, or to ‘monkey around’), to a disparagement of the less‐than‐human monkey that is common to many cultures (including that of India), and to what Japanese anthropologist Ohnuki‐Tierney terms the animal's ‘scapegoat’ role (1987: 34). However I also intend it to playfully allude to Hanuman's intermediary and intercessory religious status, to be discussed below. The research on which this essay is based was supported by a Senior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies and I am grateful to the Institute's staff, especially the Director‐General, Dr Pradeep Mehendiratta, for their kind assistance.