01Born of Brahma’s yawn
When the devas took birth as vanaras to help Vishnu’s avatar, Brahma said that he had already made Jambavan, king of the bears, long before: he came out of Brahma’s mouth as Brahma yawned. He is the oldest being in Rama’s army. On the southern shore he tells the young vanaras that once, in his youth, when Vishnu as Trivikrama measured the worlds in three strides, he went round him in reverence. Now he is old, he says, and could leap ninety yojanas at most, not the hundred to Lanka.
02Reminding Hanuman
Each vanara named how far he could leap and none could reach Lanka and come back. Angada offered to go, and Jambavan would not let the leader risk himself. Then he turned to Hanuman, who was sitting apart and saying nothing. He told him his birth: the apsara Anjana, the Wind who was his father, the leap at the sun, the boons of the devas. Why are you silent, he asked, when you are equal to Garuda? Hanuman stood, and as he listened he grew, and the vanaras roared.
03“Is Hanuman alive?”
The night Indrajit’s Brahmastra laid the whole army on the field, Vibhishana and Hanuman went looking among the fallen with torches. They found Jambavan pierced with arrows and unable to see. He knew Vibhishana by his voice and asked only one thing: is Hanuman alive? Vibhishana asked why he did not ask after Rama. If Hanuman lives, Jambavan said, the army lives even though slain; if he is gone, we are dead though breathing. He sent Hanuman to the Himalaya, between Rishabha and Kailasa, for the four healing herbs.
The Bhagavata Purana tells that in the Dvapara Yuga Shri Krishna fought him for the Syamantaka jewel and married his daughter Jambavati.