1 verses · ~1 min
बिनती भरत करत कर जोरे। दिनबन्धु दीनता दीनकी कबहुँ परै जनि भोरे॥१॥ तुम्हसे तुम्हहिं नाथ मोको, मोसे, जन तुम्हहि बहुतेरे। इहै जानि पहिचानि प्रीति छमिये अघ औगुन मेरे॥२॥ यों कहि सीय-राम-पाँयन परि लखन लाइ उर लीन्हें। पुलक सरीर नीर भरि लोचन कहत प्रेम पन कीन्हें॥३॥ तुलसी बीते अवधि प्रथम दिन जो रघुबीर न ऐहौ। तो प्रभु-चरन-सरोज-सपथ जीवत परिजनहि न पैहौ॥४॥
इति
The Poet
तुलसीदास
Tulsidas
1532 · 1623
There are works of literature, and there are works that become the living tissue of a civilization works so deeply absorbed into the bloodstream of a people that they cease to be read and begin, instead, to be breathed. Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas is that second and almost impossibly rare thing. Composed in Awadhi in the sixteenth century, at a time when Sanskrit had erected a wall of exclusion around sacred knowledge, the Ramcharitmanas was an act of radical democratization a decision by a scholar of profound erudition to lay down his privilege and carry the light directly to those who had been told they were unworthy of it. Tulsidas took the Valmiki Ramayana and did not merely translate it. He recomposed it in the devotional key of Bhakti, saturating every couplet with such concentrated love that the text functions as much as a spiritual practice as a literary one. Generations of Hindu households have woken before dawn to the sound of these verses, heard them at birth and at death, found in them the moral grammar by which they ordered their lives. Tulsidas was not merely a poet. He was, in the most precise sense, an architect one who built a cathedral large enough for an entire subcontinent to live inside. The structure still stands. It has sheltered half a billion souls and shows no sign of age.
Paired Painting
Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana at the Hermitage of Bharadvaja
This exquisite folio captures a moment of profound spiritual stillness from the epic Ramayana. Here, the divine exiles Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana find sanctuary within the humble hermitage of the sage Bharadvaja. The artist, working within the tradition established by the master Nainsukh, paints with a deep reverence for the natural world: rendering the rolling hills, serene lotus ponds, and dense foliage as a living testimony to the sanctity of forest life. It is an image that breathes with the quietude of devotion, showing the royal figures transitioned into ascetic life, surrounded by the wisdom of the sage, while the world beyond continues its gentle, rhythmic flow.
Open the viewer →