Tulsidas (c. 1532 – 1623) was a Brahmin Vaishnava poet of north India whose Awadhi-language retelling of the Valmiki Ramayana, the Ramcharitmanas, has been the principal scripture of Rama bhakti in the Hindi-speaking belt for four centuries. Born at Rajapur in present-day Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, he received his education at Sukar Khet near Ayodhya under Narharidas of the Ramanandi sampradaya, and composed the Ramcharitmanas at Ayodhya beginning in 1574. He died at Assi Ghat in Varanasi in 1623. The Hanuman Chalisa, twelve other shorter works including the Vinaya Patrika and the Kavitavali, and the Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple at Varanasi are also part of his legacy.
The dating problem and the traditional biography
The standard birth date of 1532 (Vikram Samvat 1589) and death date of 1623 (Vikram Samvat 1680) come from the colophon information in Tulsidas’s own works and from the early biography by Beni Madhav Das (the Mool Gosain Charit, late 17th century). The 1532 birth gives him 91 years; some traditional accounts extend the date to give him 111 years, which is not credible. The biographical outline is:
- Birth at Rajapur (or Sukar Khet, depending on source) into a Saraswat Brahmin family. The hagiographic claim that he was born with 32 teeth and able to speak the name Ram is folkloric.
- Education at Sukar Khet under Narharidas of the Ramanandi tradition, the lineage of Ramananda and the school of saguna bhakti to Rama.
- Marriage to Ratnavali; the well-known story of his wife’s rebuke (“if you loved Rama as much as you love this body of mine”) provoking his renunciation. The story is hagiographic.
- Pilgrimages across north India and a long residence at Ayodhya during the composition of the Ramcharitmanas, 1574 onward.
- Later years at Varanasi, residing at Assi Ghat in the small house that became the Tulsidas Smarak. Death at Varanasi in 1623.
The Ramcharitmanas
The composition began at Ayodhya on Ram Navami (Chaitra Shukla Navami) of Vikram Samvat 1631, which corresponds to 30 March 1574 CE. The work was completed in 1576 or 1577, with the last sections likely composed at Varanasi. It runs to approximately 12,800 lines in 1,073 chaupais (four-line stanzas of 64 mora each) and other Awadhi metres including dohas, sortas and chands. The seven kandas (Bal, Ayodhya, Aranya, Kishkindha, Sundara, Lanka, Uttara) follow the structure of the Valmiki Ramayana.
The Ramcharitmanas is not a translation of Valmiki. Tulsidas adapts the narrative to the Ramanandi devotional frame: Rama is openly identified as the parabrahma incarnate, Hanuman receives a much expanded role, the Bhushundi-Garuda samvad in the Uttara Kanda is a Tulsidas addition that frames the text as a Bhakti scripture, and the Awadhi register is calibrated for oral recitation in village settings. The annual Ramlila tradition of north India, performed in the autumn weeks before Dussehra, takes the Ramcharitmanas as its principal script.
The shorter works
The traditional canon of Tulsidas’s works lists twelve major texts in addition to the Ramcharitmanas. The principal ones:
- Hanuman Chalisa: 40 verses in Awadhi praising Hanuman. The most widely recited Hindi devotional text after the Ramcharitmanas itself; daily recitation across north India.
- Vinaya Patrika (Petition of Humility): 279 padas in Braj Bhasha addressed as a petition to Rama. Composed at Varanasi in the poet’s later years. Considered his most personal and confessional work.
- Kavitavali: a collection of about 350 stanzas in kavitt and savaiya metres, retelling episodes from the Rama story in a literary register intended for court recitation.
- Gitavali: roughly 330 padas in Braj, intended for singing, retelling the Ramcharitmanas episodes as bhajans.
- Dohavali: 573 dohas in Awadhi and Braj, gnomic verses on devotion and conduct.
- Sankat Mochan Hanumanashtak: eight verses to Hanuman, composed at Varanasi.
The Varanasi years and Sankat Mochan
Tulsidas moved his residence to Varanasi after completing the Ramcharitmanas, living at Assi Ghat on the south bank of the Ganga, where the Varuna joins. The traditional account places the foundation of the Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple in the southern part of Varanasi at this period; the temple is among the principal Hanuman shrines of north India and the Tuesday and Saturday darshan are still organised around recitation from the Hanuman Chalisa. The Tulsi Manas Mandir at Durgakund in Varanasi was built in 1964 to commemorate the poet at the spot the local tradition identifies as the place he completed the work.
Tulsidas died at Assi Ghat in 1623; he composed the Vinaya Patrika as his final petition to Rama. The small Tulsi Smarak at Assi Ghat preserves the spot identified by tradition as his residence.
Influence on north Indian devotion
The Ramcharitmanas became the principal scripture of north Indian Vaishnavism within a generation of Tulsidas’s death. It established Awadhi as a literary language equal in religious authority to Sanskrit, gave the Rama bhakti tradition a continuous oral and recitational presence in village life, and is the founding text of the Ramlila theatrical tradition that runs each autumn from Ramnagar across Banaras to dozens of north Indian towns. The 31-day Ramnagar Ramlila staged opposite Varanasi by the Maharaja’s family follows the Ramcharitmanas verbatim as its script.
For what it’s worth, reading the Ramcharitmanas in English condensation gives a misleading sense of the work. The text is a sung text; its register, its caesura, its repetitions all assume vocal recitation. The Gita Press Gorakhpur edition with parallel Awadhi-Hindi prose and the McGregor English translation (Penguin Classics, 2004) are the principal entry points, but neither substitutes for hearing a few minutes of a village pravachan.
Common questions
Is the Ramcharitmanas the same as the Ramayana?
It is one Ramayana, not the only one. Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana, of about 24,000 verses dating to roughly the 5th-2nd century BCE, is the source. Tulsidas’s Awadhi Ramcharitmanas is a 16th-century devotional retelling with substantial additions and reframings. The Tamil Kamba Ramayanam (12th century), the Bengali Krittibasi Ramayana (15th century), the Adhyatma Ramayana (14th-15th century Sanskrit), and others are independent regional retellings. Tulsidas drew on the Adhyatma Ramayana for the openly devotional framing.
Did Tulsidas write the Hanuman Chalisa?
The traditional attribution to Tulsidas is universally accepted in the devotional tradition. The text is in Awadhi, in Tulsidas’s idiom, and is included in standard editions of his collected works. No manuscript from his lifetime survives, so the attribution is secure within the tradition rather than independently documentable. The 40-verse structure (chalisa) follows the literary form of the period.
Where can visitors go today?
Tulsi Smarak at Assi Ghat (Varanasi) marks his residence and death site; the Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple in the southern part of the city is the principal Hanuman shrine associated with him; the Tulsi Manas Mandir at Durgakund is the modern commemorative temple. At Ayodhya, the Tulsi Chaura at the Saryu bank marks the spot identified as the composition site of the Ramcharitmanas. Rajapur in Banda district has the family temple and the manuscript fragments preserved by the local Tulsidas Trust.
One limitation worth noting
The full canon of works attributed to Tulsidas includes texts of disputed authorship. The standard Gita Press edition includes twelve works; the academic Hindi tradition (Mata Prasad Gupta and others) accepts a narrower core of about six firmly attributed texts, with the rest as plausibly his or as later compositions in his style. The biographical summary is at the Tulsidas entry on Wikipedia, and the Sacred-Texts archive holds an older English translation at the Ramcharitmanas page on Sacred-Texts.
