Tulsidas Jayanti 2017

Tulsidas Jayanti celebrates the birth anniversary of Goswami Tulsidas, the poet-saint whose Awadhi retelling of the Ramayana, the Ramcharitmanas, remains the single most widely read and recited scripture in North India. Tradition places his birth on Shravana Shukla Saptami, the same tithi observed each year as his Jayanti. He is said to have been born already able to speak the name "Rama," and was given the childhood name Rambola ("the one who says Ram") for it.

Tulsidas was raised and educated by the sage Narharidas at Sukar-kshetra (present-day Soron), where he was trained in Sanskrit grammar, the Vedas, and the great epics. He later married Ratnavali, and it is a sharp, famous rebuke from her, over his consuming attachment to her rather than to God, that tradition credits with turning him toward renunciation and a life wholly devoted to Rama. He settled between Kashi (Varanasi) and Ayodhya for the rest of his life.

At Chitrakoot, Tulsidas is said to have received darshan of Hanuman, who in turn led him to an actual vision of Rama and Lakshmana. It was this direct devotional experience, tradition holds, that gave him the authority and inspiration to compose the Ramcharitmanas: not in Sanskrit, the language of scholars, but in Awadhi, the language spoken by ordinary people, so that the story of Rama could belong to everyone. He began the work at Ayodhya and completed it at Kashi. Alongside the Ramcharitmanas, he is traditionally credited with the Hanuman Chalisa, and with other works including the Vinaya Patrika, Kavitavali, Dohavali, and Gitavali. Some Vaishnava tradition holds Tulsidas to be a later incarnation of Maharshi Valmiki himself, the two great poets of Rama's story linked across ages.