हनूमतस्ताराश्वासनं ताराप्रत्याख्यानं च

Tārā lay on the ground like a star fallen from the sky, and Hanumān, leader of the monkey troops, gently began to console her. The word "gently" matters: a woman stricken with grief should not be roused abruptly. He began with the law of action. "Whatever a creature does, thinking it good or knowing it wrong, it reaps the whole fruit of it, good and bad, after death, and it receives that fruit without resistance, for it cannot be otherwise. So grief for another's death bears no fruit." Then with two questions he cut at the very root of her sorrow: "You are yourself someone to be pitied; whom are you grieving for? You are yourself wretched; on whom do you take pity? In this body, which is like a bubble on water, who is there to mourn and who to be mourned?" The question lays bare how fleeting the body is. Not only is Vālī gone, the one who mourns him is just as mortal, and once that is understood grief has nothing left to stand on.

"Your son lives," Hanumān went on, "so it is to him you should look, to the boy Aṅgada, and you should think what will serve him in the time to come." So he turned her eyes from the dead to the living, from the grief of the present to the duties of the future. "You know well, being wise, that the coming and going of creatures keeps no fixed hour; no one's birth or death waits on an appointed time. A wise woman should therefore do what is good and helps the dead in the next world, not spend herself in weeping and the other outward shows of grief. He on whom hundreds, thousands and hundreds of thousands of monkeys rested their hopes has himself come to his appointed end today." If even so great a refuge can fall like this, the power of fate cannot be overcome. "He pursued his ends by just means and was always ready with conciliation, gifts and forbearance, and so he has gone to the world won by dharma. You should not grieve for a husband who has reached a good end by his own deeds." Hanumān's reasoning is that if the dead have gone to a good place, grief has no ground.

"All these tigers among monkeys, your son Aṅgada, and the kingship over monkeys and bears," said Hanumān to the blameless Tārā, "all of it now looks to you as its protector. Aṅgada and Sugrīva are both burning with grief; urge them on gently, noble lady, not suddenly. Take Aṅgada under your care and let him rule the earth. Whatever the scriptures say a son is for, the rites that help a father in the next world, and whatever must now be done for the king, let it all be done; this is what the hour demands, and once the hour has passed nothing can be accomplished." Then he said plainly the two things that had to be done: the funeral rites for the monkey king must be performed, and Aṅgada must be consecrated. "When you see your son seated on the lion-throne, you will find peace." The promise of peace means that the cure for grief lies in action, not in lament; it is common wisdom that when a grieving woman is given something to do, she rises of her own accord.

Tārā, crushed by her husband's fall, heard him out and made her reply to Hanumān as he stood before her. "Put a hundred sons like Aṅgada on one side," she said, "and on the other the embrace of this hero's body, dead though he is, and the embrace is better." Not even a hundred sons could take a husband's place. "I have no say over the monkey kingdom, nor over Aṅgada; someone else will consecrate him. His uncle Sugrīva is the one next in line for every duty, and the right is his. I cannot act on this counsel of yours about Aṅgada, Hanumān. It is the father who is a son's true kinsman, best of monkeys, not the mother." With this maxim she set aside all thought of the kingdom; in her view even a mother cannot stand in a father's place. And last she declared her resolve: "For me there is nothing more fitting, in this world or the next, than to follow the king of monkeys. This bed, where my hero lies slain as he fought face to face with his enemy, is the only bed fit for me." With one word of love she turned aside all of Hanumān's wise counsel.