Tulsidas

(1532–1623) Poet-saint and devotee
(bhakta) of the god Rama, whose greatest work, the Ramcharitmanas, retells
the epic Ramayana in the vernacular
language of his day. According to evidence in his poetry, Tulsidas was born
into a desperately poor brahmin family,
but his life was transformed by the
power of Rama’s name. This can be
taken as a reference to his teacher, who
is believed to have been a Ramanandi,
but it can also be taken literally. Tulsidas
continually stresses that the name of
Rama embodies the divinity’s power and
thus makes that power accessible to
devotees. According to tradition, he
lived a fairly hard life despite his fame,
and because of his emphasis on devotion, he reportedly faced problems from
other brahmins, who were concerned
about maintaining their social status.
As with all of the Ramayana’s vernacular retellings, Tulsidas did not merely
translate the story of Rama but interpreted it according to his own religious
convictions. The two most important
shifts are his overwhelming emphasis
on the importance of devotion (bhakti)
and the saving power of the name
of Rama, to which Tulsidas gives
greater importance than Rama himself.
Tulsidas also brings in mythic material
from a variety of other sources, most
notably the Shiva Purana and the
Adhyatmaramayana. This material is
largely added to the first and last chapters, where Tulsidas makes his greatest
changes from the original epic. One theory to explain why Tulsidas brought in
this other material is that he was trying
to transcend narrow sectarian boundaries, and a sign of this is that much of
the text is narrated by the god Shiva, in
the form of a dialogue to his wife
Parvati. For part of the final book, Shiva
is supplanted as narrator by the crow
Bhushundi, who symbolizes the power
of devotion to rescue even a common
carrion-eating crow. Aside from the
Ramcharitmanas, Tulsidas composed
many other works in varying regional
languages and dedicated to various
deities; the most important are the
Kavitavali, the Vinaya Patrika, the
Ramavali, and the Shrikrishnavali.
Tulsidas himself refers to writing down
his poems, and although the manuscript
tradition is uncertain for some of his
texts, the transition from song to written
text took place much faster than for
most of his contemporary poet-saints,
many of whom were illiterate. For further information see F. Raymond Allchin
(trans.), Kavitavali, 1964; W. Douglas P.
Hill (trans.), The Holy Lake of the Acts of
Rama, 1971; and John Stratton Hawley
and Mark Juergensmeyer (trans.), Songs
of the Saints of India, 1988.