Tulasīdās Jayantī 2001

Tulasīdās Jayantī celebrates the birth anniversary of Gosvāmī Tulasīdās, the poet-saint whose Avadhī retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa, the Rāmacaritamānasa, remains the single most widely read and recited scripture in North India. Tradition places his birth on Śrāvaṇa Śukla Saptamī, the same tithi observed each year as his Jayantī. He is said to have been born already able to speak the name "Rāma," and was given the childhood name Rāmbolā ("the one who says Rām") for it.

Tulasīdās was raised and educated by the sage Narahari Dās at Śūkara-kṣetra (present-day Soron), where he was trained in Sanskrit grammar, the Vedas, and the great epics. He later married Ratnāvalī, 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 Rāma. He settled between Kāśī (Vārāṇasī) and Ayodhyā for the rest of his life.

At Citrakūṭa, Tulasīdās is said to have received darśana of Hanumān, who in turn led him to an actual vision of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa. It was this direct devotional experience, tradition holds, that gave him the authority and inspiration to compose the Rāmacaritamānasa: not in Sanskrit, the language of scholars, but in Avadhī, the language spoken by ordinary people, so that the story of Rāma could belong to everyone. He began the work at Ayodhyā and completed it at Kāśī. Alongside the Rāmacaritamānasa, he is traditionally credited with the Hanumān Cālīsā, and with other works including the Vinaya Patrikā, Kavitāvalī, Dohāvalī, and Gītāvalī. Some Vaiṣṇava tradition holds Tulasīdās to be a later incarnation of Maharṣi Vālmīki himself, the two great poets of Rāma's story linked across ages.