Ramcharitmanas

Ramcharitmanas, also spelt as Ramacharitamanasa, is an epic poem in Awadhi dialect of Hindi, composed by the 16th-century Indian bhakti poet Goswami Tulsidas (c.1532–1623). Ramcharitmanas literally means"Lake of the deeds of Rama". Ramcharitmanas is considered as one of the greatest works of Hindi literature. The work has been acclaimed as "the living sum of Indian culture", "the tallest tree in the magic garden of medieval Indian poetry", "the greatest book of all devotional literature", "the Bible of Northern India", and "the best and most trustworthy guide to the popular living faith of the Indian people".

The core of the work is considered by some to be a poetic retelling of the events of the Sanskrit epicRamayana, centered on the narrative of Rama, the scion of the family tree of Raghu of the Sun Dynasty and the crown prince of Ayodhya who is also considered in Hindu tradition as one of the Avataras of Vishnu. However, Tulsidas never alludes to Ramcharitmanas as being a retelling of Valmiki Ramayana. He calls the epic Ramcharitmanas as the story of Rama was stored in the mind (Mānasa) of Shiva before he narrated the same to His consort Parvati. Tulsidas claims to have received the story through his guru, Narharidas. Tulsidas was unconscious and the story was stored in his mind (Mānasa) for long before he wrote it down asRamcharitmanas. The epic poem is, therefore, also referred to as Tulsikrit Ramayana (literally, The Ramayana composed by Tulsidas).

The Ramcharitmanas consists of seven Kāndas (i.e. parts or books). Tulsidas compared the seven Kāndas (literally "books" or "episodes", cognate with cantos) of the epic to seven steps leading into the holy waters of Lake Manasarovar "which purifies the body and the soul at once".

Ramcharitmanas, for the first time in the history of North India, made available the story of Rama to the common man to sing, meditate and perform on. Tulsidas was a great scholar of Sanskrit. However, he wanted the story of Rama to be accessible to the general masses and not just the Sanskrit-speaking elite. In order to make the story of Rama as accessible to the layman as to the scholar, Tulsidas chose to write in Awadhi, a local dialect of Hindi which was in vogue as the language of general parlance in large parts of north India during the composition of the work. Tradition has it that Tulsidas had to face a lot of criticism from the sanskrit scholars of Varanasi for being a bhasha(vernacular) poet. However, Tulsidas remained steadfast in his resolve for simplifying the knowledge of the Vedas and Upanishads to the common people and was subsequently accepted by all. The writing of Ramcharitmanas also heralded many a cultural tradition, most significantly that of the tradition of Ramlila, the dramatic enactment of the text.

The Ramcharitmanas is considered by many as a work belonging to the Saguna school of the Bhakti movement in Hindi literature.