3 days Ago By Gaurav Yadav
Around the eighth century, a movement was started by Adi Shankaracharya to revive the influence of the Vedas among the Hindus. His teachings, which belong to the school of thought called Advaita Vedanta, revere the formless Brahman as the ultimate God. Shankaracharya's ideas had a great influence on the entire country.
One side effect was that the religious life became very dry as there was no physical representation of the metaphysical Brahman. At the same time, the inequities perpetrated by the caste system were weakening the Hindu religion, and the so-called lower castes were moving to other faiths. In South India, the Bhakti movement started in response to these factors.
Bhakti poets had no problem with physical representations of God. They rejected all markers of differentiation such as caste. They preached in local languages so that people could easily understand their message.
The earliest saints were the Vaishnava Alvars and the Shaiva Nayanars. In the 11th century came Ramanuja, who has been called the most influential saint of the Bhakti movement. He was responsible for spreading the Bhakti movement outside South India.
Ramananda was a saint who lived in Varanasi in the 14th century. The philosophy of Ramanuja inspired him. Ramananda is considered a pioneer of the Bhakti movement in North India.
Among his numerous followers were famous poets Kabir and Ravidas. The teachings of these followers of Ramananda influenced Tulsidas, who lived in the 16th century. Taking the ideas of the Bhakti saints who came before him, Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitmanas, which is acknowledged as one of the greatest poems not just of Hindi or India but the entire world.
The ultimate source for Ramcharitmanas was Valimiki’s Ramayana, but it was also influenced by Adhyatma Ramayana (spiritual Ramayana), a Sanskrit text written between the 13th and 15th century that represents the story of Rama in the spiritual context of Advaita Vedanta. Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitmanas in Awadhi—a Hindi dialect popular in Uttar Pradesh. The book consists of seven kaands (cantos), totalling about 12,800 lines—Baal kaand (Chapter of the Childhood), Ayodhya kaand (Chapter of Ayodhya), Aranya kaand (Chapter of the Forest), Kishkindha kaand (Chapter of Kishkindha), Sundar kaand (Chapter of Beauty), Lanka kaand (Chapter of Lanka), Uttar kaand (Chapter of Later Events).
The kaands are of unequal length, with the first two making up more than half of it. While Valmiki Ramayana showed Sri Rama as an ideal human being, Ramcharitmanas considers him to be an avatar of Vishnu. Tulsidas wrote other books like Vinaya Patrika, Gitavali, Dohavali, Kavitavali, etc.
, but Ramcharitmanas is his magnum opus and can be called the culmination of several centuries of Bhakti teachings..
