Ramcharitmanas

Tulsidas wrote his Ramayana in Awadhi, the language people actually spoke, not Sanskrit. Tradition holds that choice made him some powerful enemies among Sanskrit-literate orthodoxy.

1Rambola to Tulsidas: Legends of Early Life

Tulsidas’s own early life comes to us mostly through tradition, not documented record. Tradition holds he was born in Rajapur, on the Yamuna in present-day Uttar Pradesh, though a rival tradition instead places his birth at Soron, further north. His parents are traditionally named as Atmaram Dubey and Hulsi.

Tradition also gives him a dramatic start in life. It says he was born under an inauspicious lunar period called Abhukta Mula, and already had a full set of teeth. Some versions say his parents, troubled by these omens, abandoned him. He was found and raised by a Ramanandi ascetic, guru Narharidas, who is credited with formally naming him Tulsidas.

1.1What turned Tulsidas from a married man into an ascetic?

Here’s the story tradition tells: Tulsidas married a woman named Ratnavali. He grew so devoted to her that he once followed her to her parents’ house against propriety, in one telling swimming the Yamuna at night to reach her. Ratnavali is said to have rebuked him sharply. She told him that if he gave Rama even half the devotion he gave her own body, “a bundle of flesh and bones,” he would find liberation.

Tradition credits this rebuke as the turning point. Tulsidas is said to have left married life afterward, turning to asceticism and a life devoted to Rama. None of this early biography can be checked against independent contemporary record. It survives as tradition, repeated across many later biographical accounts.

2A Vernacular Retelling

The Ramcharitmanas is an epic retelling of the Rama story. Tulsidas composed it in the 16th century CE.

He wrote it in Awadhi, a vernacular Eastern Hindi dialect. He did not write in Sanskrit. It is a devotional retelling, not a direct translation, of Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana.

Valmiki’s Rama is chiefly an ideal man. Tulsidas presents Rama explicitly as supreme God. This reflects Bhakti-era devotional theology. The Ramcharitmanas is considered a major work of the Saguna school of the Bhakti movement in Hindi literature.

• Writing in the common people’s own language, instead of Sanskrit, was a deliberate choice.
• This choice helped make the Rama story accessible far beyond a small Brahminical, Sanskrit-literate elite.

3Structure and Legacy

Tulsidas began the Ramcharitmanas in Ayodhya in 1574 CE. He started on Ram Navami, Rama’s traditional birthday. He composed it across Ayodhya, Varanasi, and Chitrakoot, finishing around 1576.

The text has seven kands, or books. Here’s why Tulsidas chose that number: he compared the seven kands to seven steps down into a purifying holy lake, or ghat, each step taking the reader deeper into the story.

3.1Why is one part of the text recited on its own?

The Sundara Kanda is centred on Hanuman’s journey to Lanka. It is widely recited on its own, independent of the full text.

3.2What else did Tulsidas write, besides the Ramcharitmanas?

Tulsidas wrote around a dozen other works too. The Vinaya Patrika is a devotional collection of hymns, structured as a petition to Rama’s court, composed in Braj Bhasha. The widely recited Hanuman Chalisa is his too. His Kavitavali retells the Rama story again, this time in verse form, rather than the Ramcharitmanas’s own chaupai-doha structure.

• The Dohavali and Gitavali are further devotional verse collections attributed to him.
• Krishna Gitavali turns to devotion for Krishna rather than Rama.
• The Barvai Ramayana is a shorter Rama-story retelling in the barvai metre.
• Janaki Mangal and Parvati Mangal are auspicious wedding-song poems, on Sita’s and Parvati’s marriages.
• Ramagya Prashna is used as a text for divination, structured to be opened at random for guidance.

Ramlila is the traditional staged dramatisation of the Ramayana, based on the Ramcharitmanas. It is performed across North India, especially around Dussehra. UNESCO inscribed it as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008.

4A Contested Choice, By Tradition

Choosing Awadhi over Sanskrit challenged an old idea. Many believed only Sanskrit was fit to carry sacred stories.

Tradition holds that this choice put Tulsidas at odds with Sanskrit-literate Brahminical orthodoxy of his day. No contemporary record documents organised opposition, though the tradition is widely repeated.

The Ramcharitmanas fits a wider Bhakti movement pattern. Vernacular devotional literature was written for ordinary worshippers. It made complex philosophical and religious ideas accessible beyond a Sanskrit-trained elite. See MedHist0011 — The Bhakti Movement for that broader picture.

The Ramcharitmanas belongs to the same Bhakti current as the Marathi poet-saint Sant Tukaram. The two worked in different regions, languages, and generations. Tulsidas represents the Saguna path, devotion to God with form. Poet-saints like Kabir instead represent the Nirguna path, devotion to a formless God.

• Ramlila’s continued popularity shows how a 16th-century literary retelling can still shape lived religious and cultural practice.
• This influence has lasted centuries, well beyond the text’s original written form.

5Two Mughal-Era Legends

Tulsidas lived through the reign of Akbar, and tradition attaches two very different legends to that overlap. Neither can be checked against a contemporary record, and the two paint almost opposite pictures of the relationship between the saint and Akbar’s court.

5.1Did Akbar really imprison Tulsidas?

A popular legend links Tulsidas to Akbar’s own capital. This is not verified history. It says Akbar summoned Tulsidas to court. Akbar grew angry when the saint refused to bow. The legend says Akbar had him imprisoned at Fatehpur Sikri.

The legend holds that Tulsidas composed the Hanuman Chalisa’s forty verses during forty days of that imprisonment. He wrote one verse a day, the story says.

On the final day, the story continues, a troop of monkeys stormed the city in chaos. Courtiers persuaded Akbar the disturbance was tied to Tulsidas’s prayers. No contemporary Mughal or literary record confirms any of this. It survives only as devotional folklore.

Whatever its historical basis, the legend shows something real. The Hanuman Chalisa became woven deeply into popular memory, as a text of protective power, not just devotion.

5.2Is there a friendlier legend about Tulsidas and the Mughal court?

A separate, far less dramatic tradition points the other way. It holds that Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, Akbar’s noble and himself a celebrated Hindi poet, admired Tulsidas and exchanged verses with him as a fellow poet. This tradition is thinly sourced, repeated mostly in anecdotal retellings rather than documented history. But it survives as a gentler counter-image to the prison story, of mutual respect between a Mughal courtier-poet and a Hindu poet-saint, rather than confrontation.

6What the PYQs Keep Testing