Ramcharitmanas

The Ramcharitmanas (“Lake of the Deeds of Rama”) of Tulsidas is the Ramayana of North India — composed in Awadhi in 1574, it became the region’s most recited, sung, and performed text, the household scripture of a civilization.

Content

In seven kands (bal, ayodhya, aranya, kishkindha, sundar, yuddha, uttar) of dohas and chaupais — roughly twelve thousand lines — the Manas follows Valmiki’s story while saturating it with bhakti: Rama as God descended, Sita as grace, Hanuman as the perfect servant. The sundar kand (Hanuman’s search for Sita) is recited as a devotion of its own; the text’s dialogues carry a complete practical ethics.

Significance

The Manas made Rama-bhakti the common religion of the Hindi belt: Ramlila theatre stages it village by village; the Ramayana month recitations, the Manas mandalis, and its melodies (the classical and folk traditions alike) keep it the most performed poem in the world’s most populous region. Gandhi called it his greatest spiritual resource.

Verification notes

• Composition date and places are documented in Tulsidas’s own accounts and early commentaries.
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).