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Art. XVI.—Tulasī Dāsa, Poet and Religious Reformer.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

G. A. Grierson
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Extract

Much, of what I shall say to-day will be familiar to those members of the Society who have lived in Northern India. A good deal has been written about Tulasī Dāsa, but it has always been addressed to a comparatively small audience—those directly interested in the details of modern Indian folk-religion. I therefore gladly take this opportunity of repeating on a larger stage what has been said before. Tulasī Dāsa is surely deserving of more notice than is usually bestowed upon him in histories of the development of the religious idea in India. He was not merely a reformer who stirred the emotions of his contemporaries and then went his way. He wields greater influence at the present day than when he died two centuries ago. Modern Hinduism has many forms and many beliefs, and yet the character of every Hindu of Upper India has been moulded in part by his teaching.

Type
Original Communications
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 1903 , pp. 447 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1903

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References

page 447 note 1 Except for a few notes and the appendixes, this lecture is given exactly as it was delivered. If it induce a few students to wander in the magic garden of Hindi poetry, I shall be amply rewarded. I have never known anyone to enter it without succumbing to ite enchantment.— G. A. G.

page 451 note 1 In Appendix II I give a translation of an often quoted specimen of his narrative style.

page 452 note 1 In an age of license Tulasī himself claims, and justly claims, credit for the cleanness of his poems. There is not one lewd thought in them from coyer to cover.

page 453 note 1 Gītāvalī, i, 32.

page 454 note 1 Kavittāvalī, v, 15.

page 456 note 1 Dōāvalī, 572.

page 457 note 1 Part of Vinaya Pattrikā, 148, 149.

page 464 note 1 Compare Ṛg-vēda, vii, 103. The celebrated hymn has had many interpreters, but this line of Tulasī Dāsa shows that it is to be interpreted literally. I can certify from personal experience that, as a matter of fact, the noise of the muttering of a number of young Brāhmaṇs learning Sanskrit exactly resembles the noise of a school of frogs. On one occasion I actually mistook one for the other.

page 465 note 1 Rāma was, of course, an incarnation of the Lord.

page 466 note 1 Here Tulasī Dāsa certainly speaks of a Nirguṇarṃ, and not of a Saguṇaṁ, Brāhman.