Tulsi Das

Born circa 1532 in Soron, in what is now the state of Uttar Pradesh; died 1624, in Benares. Indian poet.

Tulsi Das wrote in Avadhi and Braj Bhasa dialects of Hindi. His multithematic narrative poem Ramayana (c. 1575; translated in Russian as Ramayana, or Ram-carit-manas: Lake of the Deeds of Ram, 1948) reflected his concept of an ideal social system, as well as the tenets of bhakti. The work was based on the classical epic poem Ramayana. Tulsi Das symbolically portrayed his epoch as an age of evil that was characterized by poverty and lawlessness. He wrote the collections Songs (c. 1570), Songs About Krishna (c. 1570), A Garland of Couplets (1583), A Collection ofHymns, In Praise of the Goddess Parvati (1586), In Praise of Sita (1586), and A Garland of Verses (1612–14).