Video Discription |
To know more about inspiring stories about saints, you can subscribe to our channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgC5Q6ox4JyFWYgJ9DpGHmA
Biography of Tulsidas
Tulsidas or Goswami Tulsidas was a 16th century great Hindu poet and saint, acclaimed as one of the greatest poets in Indian and world literature. Tulsidas is renowned for his dedication and devotion to the Lord Rama and being the author of great epic, the Ramcharitmanas a devotional retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana based on Rama's life in the vernacular Awadhi. The word Ramcharitmanas literally means "Lake of the deeds of Rama".
He is also considered to be the composer of the Hanuman Chalisa, a popular devotional hymn dedicated to Hanuman, the divine devotee of lord Rama.
According to legends, Tulsidas was born in 1497 at the banks of the river Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, India. After his birth, instead of crying he spoke Rama word. That’s why he named as Rambola (meaning literally, one who utters Rama).
Rambola parents abandoning him after birth. The female maid of his mother took care of him but she also died after caring him for just five and a half years. After that event, Rambola lived as a poor orphan and walked door to door begging for alms.
At the age of five years, Rambola was adopted by his spiritual Guru - Narharidas, a ascetic of Saint Ramananda's monastic order. Rambola was given the Diksha i.e. initiation and was given the new name of Tulsidas. When he was seven years old, his "sacred thread ceremony" was performed by his Guru - at Ayodhya, a pilgrimage-site related to Lord Rama. His guru repeatedly narrated the Ramayana to him, which led him to understand it somewhat. Tulsidas later came to the sacred city of Varanasi and studied Sanskrit grammar, scriptural reading of Vedas and the six schools of Hindu philosophy over a period of 15–16 years.
After study, he came back to his birthplace, by the permission of his Guru. He started to live in his family home and narrating the story of Ramayana.
Tulsidas got married to Ratnavali and they had a son named Tarak who died as a toddler.
Once when Tulsidas had gone to a temple, Ratnavali went to her father's home with her brother. When Tulsidas came to know this, he swam across the Yamuna river in the night to meet his wife. Ratnavali chided Tulsidas for this, and remarked that if Tulsidas was even half as devoted to God as he was to her body of flesh and blood, he would have been redeemed. This awakened Tulsidas from the worldly delusion, he left her instantly and he renounced the householder's life and became a renunciant.
After renunciation, Tulsidas spent most of his time at Varanasi reciting katha i.e. discourses of Lord Ram to general people.
There is a beautiful story of Tulsidas meeting one of the greatest devotees of Lord Ram – Hanuman. As Tulsidas used to recite discourses, he noted that the first listener to arrive at his discourse was an old leper, who sat at the end of the gathering. After the Katha was over, Tulsidas quietly followed the leper to the woods. In the woods Tulsidas firmly fell at the leper's feet, shouting "I know who you are" and "You cannot escape me". At first the leper ignorance but Tulsidas did not relent. Then the leper revealed his original form of Hanuman and blessed Tulsidas. Tulsidas expressed his desire to see Lord Rama face to face to Hanuman. Hanuman told him to go to Chitrakuta, a place where he would see Rama with his own eyes.
After getting instructed with the Hanuman, he started to live in an Ashram in Chitrakuta. One day when he went for making the pilgrimage to a Mountain, he saw the two princes on the horsebacks. But he could not distinguish them. Later when he acknowledged that they were Lord Rama and his brother Lakshman by the Hanuman, he got disappointed. On the next morning, he met Rama again when he was making sandalwood paste. Rama came to him in and asked for a Tilaka (a religious mark on the forehead) with sandalwood paste, in this way he had a full sight of the Rama. Tulsidas was so charmed that he forgot about the sandalwood. then Rama took tilak himself and applied on his forehead and also on the Tulsidas’s forehead before disappearing.
Tulsidas like all great saints performed many miracles. In one such, he is believed to have brought back a dead man to life. While the man was being taken for cremation, his widow bowed down to Tulsidas on the way who addressed her as Saubhagyavati (a woman whose husband is alive). The widow told Tulsidas her husband had just died, so his words could not be true. Tulsidas said that the word has passed his lips and so he would restore the dead man to life. He asked everybody present to close their eyes and uttered the name of lord Rama, on doing which the dead Brahmin was raised back to life. KYqHN76aws0 |