TULSIDAS

born 1543?, probably Rajapur, India died 1623, Varanasi Indian sacred poet whose principal work, the Ramcaritmanas (Sacred Lake of the Acts of Rama), is the greatest achievement of medieval Hindi literature and has exercised an abiding influence on the Hindu culture of northern India. The Ramcaritmanas expresses par excellence the religious sentiment of bhakti (loving devotion) to the Vaisnava avatar, Rama, who is regarded as the chief means of salvation. Although Tulsidas was above all a devotee of Rama, he remained a Smarta Vaisnava (a follower of the more generally accepted traditions and customs of Hinduism rather than a strict sectarian), and his poem gives some expression both to orthodox monistic Advaita doctrine and to the polytheistic mythology of Hinduismthough these are everywhere subordinated to his expression of bhakti for Rama. His eclectic approach to doctrinal questions meant that he was able to rally wide support for the worship of Rama in northern India, and the success of the Ramcaritmanas has been a prime factor in the replacement of the Krishna (Krsna) cult by the cult of Rama as the dominant religious influence in that area. Little is known about Tulsidas' life. He was probably born at Rajapur and lived most of his adult life at Varanasi. The Ramcaritmanas was written between 1574 and 1576 or 1577. A number of early manuscripts are extantsome fragmentaryand one is said to be an autograph. The oldest complete manuscript is dated 1647. The poem, written in Awadhi, an Eastern Hindi dialect, consists of seven cantos of unequal lengths. Although the ultimate source of the central narrative is the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, Tulsidas' principal immediate source was the Adhyatma Ramayana, a late medieval recasting of the epic that had already sought to harmonize the Advaita system and the Rama cult. The influence of the Bhagavata-Purana, the chief scripture of the Krishna cult, is also discernible, with that of a number of minor sources. Eleven other works are attributed with some certainty to Tulsidas. These include Krsna gitavali, a series of 61 songs in honour of Krishna; Vinay pattrika, a series of 279 verse passages addressed to Hindu sacred places and deities (chiefly Rama and Sita); and Kavitavali, telling incidents from the story of Rama. A prose translation of the Ramcaritmanas, with a useful introduction, is W.D.P. Hill's The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama (1952).