Tulsidas
Quick answer: Tulsidas craft guide: the chaupai-doha engine of the Ramcharitmanas, vernacular courage and verse built for recitation. Lessons for working poets.
In 1574, in Ayodhya, Tulsidas began retelling the story of Ram not in Sanskrit, the prestige language of scripture, but in Awadhi, the language spoken in the lanes around him. The result, the Ramcharitmanas, became arguably the most recited poem in the world: chanted in homes and temples daily, staged every autumn in Ramlila performances across North India, its verses functioning for millions as scripture, literature and proverb at once.
Tulsidas, who lived from about 1532 to 1623, was a scholar who chose the people's tongue, and that single decision is his first lesson for any poet. The second is architectural: he built a stanza engine sturdy enough to carry an epic across thousands of verses without losing a listener.
Who he was
Tulsidas was a devotee of Ram in the bhakti tradition, and legend fills the gaps of his biography generously. His documented legacy is textual: alongside the Ramcharitmanas he wrote the Vinaya Patrika, a sequence of humble petitions to God, and Kavitavali, and tradition attributes the Hanuman Chalisa, perhaps the most recited forty verses in India, to him.
He faced criticism from Sanskrit scholars for putting sacred narrative into a common tongue. He carried on, and the wager paid: the poem entered ordinary speech so deeply that people quote it without knowing they are quoting.
The signature moves
The Ramcharitmanas runs on visible, imitable machinery.
What you can learn
Steal the engine. If you are writing a long poem or sequence, alternate two forms: a workhorse stanza for movement and a short, punchy form, a couplet, a single line, for arrival. The alternation gives readers a rhythm of effort and reward that a uniform stanza cannot.
Steal the wager too. Whatever your training tells you is the proper register for serious subjects, try the register of your own kitchen instead. And test your lines for memorability: if a stranger cannot repeat your best line after two hearings, examine its stresses and consonants and tighten them.
Where to start reading
Begin with a translated selection of the Ramcharitmanas; complete English versions exist, and the Sundar Kand section, focused on Hanuman, is a popular entry point. The Vinaya Patrika shows his intimate, petitioning voice, a contrast to the epic register. To feel the poem as its audience does, attend or watch a Ramlila performance, where the verses return to the street they were written for.
What poets can take from this
- In long poems, alternate a narrative stanza with a short landing form for emphasis.
- Choose the language of your street over the language of your schooling.
- Use repeated epithets and dense consonant patterns to make lines memorable.
- Frame a story inside a told conversation to earn shifts of perspective.
- Adopt humility on the page; an unassuming narrator makes a vast subject feel vaster.
Try it yourself
Retell a story your community treats as important, a founding event, a family legend, a local miracle, in the plainest spoken language you know. Alternate four-line stanzas of narrative with single free-standing couplets that summarise or judge what just happened.
Questions
What is Tulsidas best known for?
For the Ramcharitmanas, his Awadhi retelling of the Ram story begun in 1574, which became one of the most recited poems in the world. The Hanuman Chalisa is also traditionally attributed to him.
Why did Tulsidas write in Awadhi instead of Sanskrit?
He wanted the story of Ram to reach ordinary people who did not know Sanskrit, and he accepted scholarly criticism for the choice. The decision made the poem a living text for millions rather than a preserve of specialists.
What is a chaupai and a doha?
Both are Hindi verse forms: the chaupai is a four-part rhythmic unit used for continuous narration, and the doha is a free-standing rhymed couplet. Tulsidas alternated runs of chaupais with dohas to pace his epic.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.