Who were the vanaras in the Ramayana – what happened to them?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
So at the time of Lord Ram there were monkeys, Vanaras were very intelligent. So they are not like the monkeys that we have seen otherwise. So who are they and what happened to them exactly? Actually the Puranas describe Vanara to be a distinct species and in that hierarchy the Vanaras are actually considered in some ways higher than humans.
Not in all ways but in some ways. We see especially like Vali and Sugriva are extremely powerful. So now the in Kali Yuga or since Kali Yuga came on this earth the universe you see Kali Yuga is something which is present on the earth because it is a particular time period in the cosmic history and time itself flows differently on different species or not different species in different areas.
One day of Brahma is a very different time from one day of earth. One day of Indra is also very different from the time of earth. So the period of Kali Yuga that is happening on earth it is not that Kali Yuga is in the heavens or Kali Yuga is in Brahma Loka.
It is on earth that Kali Yuga is there. They don’t have Kali Yuga. No.
The time scale is different over there and the whole conception is different. So this whole time scale is measured from the earth’s perspective. So Kali Yuga is considered to be a very infected age.
Infected Kali Yuga. Ocean of faults are there. So as a consequence of Kali Yuga being such a faulty age very contaminated age in a sense the earth in this age is quarantined from the rest of the universe.
That’s why all the various species, it’s not just Vanaras let’s talk about Rakshasa, let’s talk about Yakshas, all those species that we hear about in the Puranas and the Itihasas, we don’t see any of them in Kali Yuga. Because Kali Yuga is an age when because the earth is contaminated so the earth is quarantined off from other species, from other areas of the universe. And those species they don’t appear on the earth at that time.
So other devatas would also come and they would give benedictions. And they would be visible when they would come. But in Kali Yuga we don’t see the devatas also.
So whether it is Vanaras or Rakshasas or whether it is devatas. The earth is quarantined in Kali Yuga and that’s why we don’t see any of them. They are a higher species Vanaras are a higher species but