Tulsīdās

Tulsīdās (c. 1532–1623) was a Hindu poet-saint, devoted to Rāma, whose Rāmcaritmānas (“The Lake of the Deeds of Rāma”), a retelling of the The Rāmāyaṇa in the Avadhī dialect of Hindi, became the most popular religious text of North India — more read, recited and performed there than the Sanskrit original or any other book. He also wrote the Hanumān Chālīsā (“Forty Verses to Hanumān”), sung daily by millions, the Vinaya Patrikā (“Petition”), the Kavitāvalī, the Gītāvalī and other works. He is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Hindi and a central figure of the saguṇa strand of the The Bhakti Movement movement.

Life

Accounts of his life are largely hagiographical. He is said to have been born at Rajapur (in modern Uttar Pradesh) under an inauspicious star, abandoned by his parents, and raised in poverty; to have been taught the Rāma story as a child by the ascetic Narharidās; to have married Ratnāvalī and become so infatuated with her that when she went to visit her parents he followed her, swimming a flooded river by clinging to a corpse and climbing to her room on a snake he took for a rope. Ratnāvalī rebuked him — “if you had half as much love for Rāma as for this body of bones and skin, you would cross the ocean of existence” — and he renounced the world. He lived as a wandering ascetic, then settled in Vārāṇasī at Assī Ghāṭ, where he composed most of his works. Legends say he had visions of Hanumān and of Rāma himself at Chitrakūṭ. He died, by tradition, in 1623.

Work

Tulsīdās began the Rāmcaritmānas in Ayodhyā on Rāma’s birthday in 1574. Writing in Avadhī rather than Sanskrit, he faced opposition from Brahmin scholars in Vārāṇasī, who held that sacred stories should be told only in Sanskrit; legend says that when the manuscript was placed in the Viśvanātha temple overnight beneath the Sanskrit scriptures, it was found on top in the morning, signed “satyaṃ śivaṃ sundaram”. See Rāmcaritmānas.

His theology is devotional and inclusive: Rāma is the supreme God, both formless (nirguṇa) and with form (saguṇa); devotion and the name of Rāma are the way to him; and his grace reaches the lowliest — the tribal woman Śabarī, the boatman Kevaṭ, the vulture Jaṭāyu, the monkeys. “The name of Rāma is greater than Rāma himself,” Tulsī wrote, for the name saves those who cannot reach the God. His work also upheld the traditional social order, and verses like “drums, fools, Śūdras, beasts and women deserve to be beaten” (ḍhol gavāṃr śūdra paśu nārī…) have been heavily criticised in modern times, and defended by others as spoken by a character, not the poet.

Legacy

Tulsīdās’s work shaped the religion, language and ethics of North India more than that of any other writer. The Rāmcaritmānas is recited in homes and temples, performed in the annual Rāmlīlā plays, and quoted in daily conversation; the Hanumān Chālīsā is perhaps the most widely recited Hindu prayer. Gandhi called the Mānas “the greatest book of all devotional literature”.