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Tulsīdās

Tulsīdās

1555 CE · Rajapur / Banda region (traditional)

c. 1511 or 1532 CE (birth year disputed); died 1623

Tulsīdās (Gosvāmī Tulsīdās) was the most influential poet of North Indian Rāma-bhakti. Traditionally born in the Rajapur/Banda area of what is now Uttar Pradesh, he became a devotee of Rāma and composed, in vernacular Awadhi rather than Sanskrit, the 'Rāmcaritmānas' ('Lake of the Deeds of Rāma'), a retelling of Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa suffused with devotional theology, which became — and remains — perhaps the single most beloved religious text of the Hindi belt, recited and dramatized (the Rāmlīlā) across the region. He wrote other major works as well (the 'Vinaya-patrikā,' the 'Hanumān Cālīsā' is traditionally attributed to him), and lived most of his life at Varanasi, where he died (traditionally 1623). His birthplace and early dates are uncertain and disputed; the literary achievement and his association with Varanasi are secure.

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Did you know?

  • The poet of the Ramcharitmanas outlived Shakespeare by seven years

    The Hindi poet-saint Tulsīdās completed his epic retelling of the Rāma story, the Rāmcaritmānas, around 1577 — years before William Shakespeare, then still a boy in Stratford, would write a line for the London stage. As Shakespeare went on to his plays, Tulsīdās's finished epic was already being recited across northern India, and the two men's lives ran on in parallel: Tulsīdās lived until 1623, dying at Assi Ghat in Varanasi seven years after Shakespeare's death in 1616.

    How we know

    Tulsīdās began the Rāmcaritmānas at Ayodhya in 1574 CE and completed it c.1576/77; he died in 1623 at Assi Ghat, Varanasi (traditional dates). Shakespeare baptized April 1564, died 23 April 1616; his London career began c.1590, after the Rāmcaritmānas was complete. 1623 − 1616 = 7.

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Stop 1 of 3Born

Rajapur / Banda region (traditional)

What they did here

Traditional birthplace; Rajapur (Chitrakoot) and Soron (Sukar Kshetra, Etah) are the two principal rival claims — Soron was officially recognized by the UP government in 2012. Born c. 1511 or 1532.

About Rajapur / Banda region (traditional)

Rājapur, in the Chitrakoot/Banda region of southern Uttar Pradesh, north India, on the Yamunā River. It is, by one tradition, given as the birthplace of the poet Tulsīdās (16th c.), author of the Rāmcaritmānas (other accounts give different birthplaces).

See other sages who lived in Rajapur / Banda region (traditional)→

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Tulsīdās’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

No works attributed in the corpus yet.