The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are called as itihasa or history. But the history these wonderful works describe are two critical moments during the collective evolution of mankind. The Ramayana describes the moment of transition from the vital man who is closer in his way of thinking and living to the animal kind to the thinking man who acts under the rule of a calm reason. The Mahabharata, on the other hand describe the evolutionary transition from the thinking man to the spiritual being. Of course India always had individuals who were spiritually evolved but collective evolution is a different matter.
So coming to the time of the Ramayana, we see the vital man evolving along two different lines. One is closer to the animal, pasu, who is evolving through the deepening of his emotional being through the psychic or soul vibration. This kind of a prototype humanity or animal humanity has the stirrings of a true humanity through the awakening of sympathy, goodness, affection towards each other. They lived in forests, vanvasis, people of the tree, often dressed like animals to keep themselves safe from the animals in the forest. Though an early humanity, they covered themselves like ape or bear or deer and tiger skin. Such portrayal of forest dwellers is described in number of books and films that show human life thousands of years back. In fact Vanara was the word used for some of these strong but simple hearted first layer of humanity that lived in the forest and wore monkey skin to identify their group from other types of evolving humans.
This other type was the Rakshasa, strong but ruthless without much of the heart or the psychic spark. The Asura was a further development along the line of the Rakshasa, ruthless and brutal but with the development of intellect leading to the additional element of cunning and ruse. They were masters of deceptions, Asuric Maya. It is quite likely that some of these migrated out of India as it was difficult for them to expand their dark kingdoms in the presence of rishis (whom they loathed just as the barbarians loathe civilisational values) and illustrious lineage of Suryavanshi and later Chandra Chandravanshi and Yaduvanshi kings who stood for dharmic values sowing seeds of a nobler humanity.
Hanuman ji of course is unique among the Vanaras due to his extraordinary feats. But that is because he was an involutionary being (a god who assumes a human or animal form to help and lead). The concept of involutionary beings from the higher planes existed in both Hindu and Western religious literature. To discuss this will be rather long though the secret of collective evolution lies in the idea of the Avatar, the involutionary descent preceding the evolutionary emergence. Lord Rama and Krishna are such descents (Avatars) who facilitated further human evolution by setting an example, leaving a living influence, removing the Rakshasic and Asuric tendencies and resetting the rules to adjust to the next level of evolution. Hanuman ji is also a yogi who has mastered certain Siddhi that raise man to a supernormal pitch in his physical, vital, mental and psychic capacities.
It is also quite possible that Jatayu and Sampati were pioneers among the Vanvasis, like Daedalus and Icarus, who experimented with the possibility of flying clumsily in a limited range with artificial wing like structures. As to Kakabhusundi and quite a few other such creatures, they are not beings of earthly dimension but of other subtle worlds of which the Rishis knew intuitively as well as through the development of certain latent subtle senses. All these things are well within the range of possibilities being discussed in modern times in rational scientific ways. In ancient times they were accepted as simple facts as mankind as a whole was yet to enter the curve of scientific materialism. Now we have lost that vision because the mind is glued to only hardcore outer material reality. Though here too human scientific search has landed him into a territory no less magical than ancient times.
Rest of it, such as the ten heads of Ravana, the birth of Rama and Sita, and many such stories belong to the occult, spiritual and symbolic dimensions of our existence and have to be dealt with and understood accordingly.
Hope this satisfies the curiosity.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
