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A man is about to tell the story of Rama in the language people speak at home. It is going to be a long story. Before he sets down a line of it, he bows. The first word he writes is “of letters,” in the plural. The first bow goes to the two who make letters, meaning, the rasas, the metres, and everything auspicious. Rama’s own name waits until the fourth shloka. There it sits inside one word with Sita’s.
Above that first word, the Gita Press page carries a line of its own. A bow to Ganesha, the words “Sita’s beloved is victorious,” and the title, the Ramcharitmanas, first sopan. A sopan is a step. Later in this kand Tulsi will make the seven books of his poem the seven steps down into a lake. The first step opens with seven shlokas in Sanskrit, then five sorthas in Awadhi, then the chaupais, from the first doha to the four parts of the seventh.
Those he bows to before the story
The main figures in this episode
- Vani and Vinayaka the makers of letters, meaning, the rasas, the metres, and auspicious things. The commentary reads them as Sarasvati and Ganesha.
- Parvati and Shiva faith and trust in person, in the second shloka. Shiva returns as the guru’s form, as Parvati’s husband in the fourth sortha, and as the Shiva every virtuous man is.
- The guru made of knowledge, eternal, in Shiva’s form. He is bowed to in Sanskrit, in Awadhi, and in the first chaupai, whose dust and nail-light lead to the poem’s first “I describe.”
- The lord of poets and the lord of monkeys two who wander in the forest of Sita’s and Rama’s virtues. The commentary names them Valmiki and Hanuman.
- Sita who brings forth, keeps, and ends, takes away affliction, does every good, and is Rama’s beloved.
- Rama under whose maya the whole universe moves, by whose being the world looks real, and whose feet are the one boat across the sea of being.
- Tulsidas who writes his own name into the seventh shloka in the third person. He calls himself “this servant” when he joins his hands to the wicked.
- The good and the wicked born of one sea, both bowed to, and told apart by when they give pain: the good when they leave, the wicked when they arrive.
The first word is a word for letters
The poem opens on the word “of letters.” The sentence runs through four more belongings before it reaches its verb: of letters, of the clusters of meaning, of the rasas, of the metres, and of auspicious things. The makers of these I bow to, Vani and Vinayaka. Vani is speech. Vinayaka is the one the first sortha will call the lord of the ganas, whose remembering brings a work to success. The commentary reads the pair as Sarasvati and Ganesha.
The five come in order, from the smallest piece a line is made of up to auspicious things. The seventh shloka will say what Tulsi means to make, a composition in the tongue people speak. The first says what such a thing is built from. And the bow goes to two. Three of the seven shlokas bow to a pair, this one, the next, and the fourth, each time with the two names fused into one Sanskrit word.
Faith, trust, and a crooked moon
The second bow is to Parvati and Shiva, who are faith and trust in person. Without those two, the shloka says, even the siddhas, the adepts whose practice has borne fruit, fail to see the Lord who stands inside their own hearts. The shloka’s word for that place, one’s own inner heart, comes back five shlokas later, in the seventh, where the poet says whose joy the work is for.
The third bow is to the guru, made of knowledge, eternal, in Shiva’s form, with one proof of what he can do. By taking refuge in him, even the crooked moon is honored everywhere, crooked as it is.
A forest, a boat, and a snake in a rope
The fourth shloka bows to two by their titles, the lord of poets and the lord of monkeys. They are men of pure knowledge who wander in the holy forest that is the host of Sita’s and Rama’s virtues. The commentary names them Valmiki and Hanuman. Both names come into the verse itself before the seventh doha, Valmiki among the sages who told their own histories, Hanuman as a saint honored in poor clothes.
The fifth shloka is Sita’s, and it comes before Rama’s. She brings forth, keeps, and ends. She takes away affliction. She does every good. She is Rama’s beloved. Her verb is different. Four shlokas have said “I bow,” and the sixth will say it again, while this one says “I am bowed.”
The sixth shloka is the longest of the seven, and it describes before it names. Under his maya the whole universe moves, Brahma, the gods, and the asuras with it. By his being all of this looks real, the way a snake does in a rope. His feet alone are the one boat for those who wish to cross the sea of being. To him, beyond every cause, the poet bows, and only then gives the name, the Lord called Rama.
For the joy of whose heart
The seventh shloka turns from bowing to telling. First the sources: what many Puranas, the Veda, and the agamas agree on, what is told in the Ramayana, and what is found here and there elsewhere too. The commentary takes the agamas as the tantra shastras. So the poet says, in the last of his opening shlokas, that some of what follows came from other places. Then the reason: that story of Rama, Tulsi spreads into a most charming composition in the common tongue, svantah sukhaya, for the joy of his own heart.
The first half of that phrase is the word the second shloka used for the place where the Lord stands. With four shlokas between them: the guru, the two walkers, Sita, and Rama. Tulsi calls his composition “most charming” himself, in a Sanskrit verse whose next line in the poem is in Awadhi. He names himself in the third person, with a third-person verb: Tulsi spreads.
Five sorthas, the first lines in the common tongue
The metre changes, and the language changes with it. The next line is a sortha in Awadhi, the first words in the tongue the seventh shloka promised. It goes to Ganesha a second time, the elephant-faced lord of the ganas, whose remembering brings success, a heap of wisdom and a house of good qualities. He is asked to show his grace. He was Vinayaka in the Sanskrit. From here the poem stays in the language people speak.
The second sortha asks for something that sounds impossible, as a thing grace does. By his grace the mute becomes a fine speaker and the lame climbs a hard mountain. So may that merciful one, who burns away all the dirt of the Kali age, melt toward me. The commentary reads the merciful one as the Lord. The verb for the grace he wants is the verb for melting.
The third and fourth paint first and ask second. One is dark as the blue lotus, with eyes like young red lotuses, and sleeps always on the sea of milk: may he make his home in my heart. The commentary names him Vishnu. The other has a body white as the kunda flower and the moon, is Parvati’s husband, a house of mercy who loves the humble and crushed Kama. May he show his grace. The commentary names him Shiva, white where Vishnu was dark.
The fifth is the guru’s: I bow to the lotus feet of the guru, an ocean of grace, the Lord himself in human form. His words are a mass of sunbeams against the thick dark of great delusion. In the Sanskrit the guru came third. In the Awadhi he comes fifth and last. The first chaupai, which follows at once, begins with the same three words, I bow, guru, feet. The guru stands on the seam between the two metres.
The dust of his feet, which becomes collyrium for the eye
The first chaupai bows to the pollen of the guru’s lotus feet and gives that dust three things a flower has: taste, scent, and juice, the juice being love. In the next line the same dust is medicine, the powder of the root of immortality, which quiets the whole family of the world’s diseases. Then it is the clean ash on the body of the Shiva that every virtuous man is. It is the mother of welfare and joy. It wipes the dirt from the mirror of the devotee’s mind. Worn as a tilak it brings the whole host of virtues under its sway.
Remember the light of the gems that are the nails of the guru’s feet, and divine sight is born in the heart. That light crushes the dark of delusion, and great is the fortune of the one it comes to. The clear eyes of the heart open. The faults and sorrows of the night of the world end. The gems and rubies of Rama’s deeds come into view, hidden and open, wherever they lie and in whichever mine. The first doha: as the seeker, the siddha, and the knowing one, with fine collyrium on their eyes. They see the many mines in hills, forests, and the earth, as a pastime. The commentary calls it the siddha collyrium.
The dust of the guru’s feet is a soft collyrium, nectar to the eyes, the breaker of the eye’s faults. With it, Tulsi says, “I make the eye of discrimination clear, and I describe the deeds of Rama, which free from the world.” That is the first “I describe” in the poem.
A king of tirthas that walks
“First I bow to the feet of the brahmins,” the next line says, the gods of the earth, who take away every doubt that delusion breeds. Then he salutes the society of the good, a mine of every virtue, with love and fine speech. The saints’ conduct is like the cotton plant’s, whose fruit is dry, white, and full of threads. It bears pain and covers the holes of others, and for that has won a fame the world bows to. The commentary opens each word. Dry, as the saint has no taste for objects. White, as the saint’s heart is clear of the dark of ignorance and sin. Full of threads, where the word for thread is the word for virtue. The holes are faults. It draws the covering out in two pictures. The thread gives its own body to close the hole the needle made. The cotton is ginned, spun, and woven to become cloth and cover what others must keep covered.
The society of the saints is made of joy and welfare, and it is the king of tirthas that walks about the world. Prayaga, the commentary says. Devotion to Rama is its Ganga. The spreading of the inquiry into Brahman is its Sarasvati. The telling of karma, what to do and what to leave undone, which carries off the dirt of the Kali age, is the sun’s daughter, the Yamuna. The stories of Vishnu and Shiva shine there as the triple braid where the three rivers meet, and give every joy and welfare to those who hear them. Unmoving trust in one’s own dharma is its banyan, the undying banyan of Prayaga in the commentary’s reading. Good deeds are its retinue. This Prayaga is within reach of everyone, every day, in every land. Served with respect it ends affliction. It is past telling and past this world, gives its fruit at once, and its power is in plain sight.
The second doha closes on the bath. Those who hear of it and understand it with a glad mind, and plunge into it with great love, gain the four fruits while the body still stands. The commentary names them dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. The fruit is promised twice over, at once and within this life.
The bath that turns a crow into a cuckoo
The fruit of the plunge is seen at once. Crows become cuckoos, and herons become swans. Let no one wonder at this, the verse says. The greatness of satsang, the company of the good, lies open. The swan will be back at the sixth doha, taking the milk out of the water.
Valmiki, Narada, and the pot-born sage, whom the commentary names Agastya, told their own histories with their own mouths. And of all the creatures of water, land, and sky, of every kind, inert and conscious. Whichever one has gained wisdom, fame, a good state, wealth, or goodness, whenever, by whatever effort, and wherever, gained it by the company of the good. In the world and in the Veda there is no other road. Discrimination is born of that company, and the company itself comes within easy reach by Rama’s grace. It is the root of joy and welfare. Reaching it is the fruit, and all the other means are the flowers.
The wicked mend when they find the company of the good, as base metal turns handsome at the touch of the philosopher’s stone, iron into gold in the commentary’s words. By fate the good fall into bad company, and there they keep their own qualities, like the gem on a snake’s hood. The commentary says it stays clear of the poison and keeps its light. The speech of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, of poets and the learned, shrinks from telling the greatness of the saints. So how could the poet, a seller of greens describing gems?
The third doha bows to the saints, whose minds are even, who hold no one as friend or foe. They are like a flower set in joined palms, which gives the same scent to both hands. The hand that plucked it and the hand that holds it, the commentary says, as the saint does good to foe and friend alike. Then the plea: saints are simple of heart and work the good of the world. Knowing that nature and that love, hear this child’s plea, and in your kindness give me love for the feet of Rama. The commentary supplies the poet’s verb, “I make my plea.”
And now, a bow to the wicked
Then the poet bows, in true feeling, to the host of the wicked. They turn without any cause against the very people who do them good. They count harm to another’s good as gain. They rejoice when another is ruined and grieve when he is settled. They are Rahu to the full moon of Vishnu’s and Shiva’s fame, blocking it wherever it is told, in the commentary’s reading. They are warriors like Sahasrabahu, the thousand-armed, in harming others. They are a thousand eyes for the faults of others. And for the ghee of another’s good their mind is a fly, which, the commentary adds, falls in, spoils it, and dies in it. In heat they are fire. In anger they are the lord of the buffalo, Yama in the commentary’s name. In the wealth of sin and vice they are as rich as the lord of wealth, Kubera in the commentary. Their rising, like the comet Ketu’s, is for the harm of all. It is good when they sleep, as Kumbhakarna slept. To spoil another’s work they give up even their own bodies, as hail flattens the crop and melts away.
Three more bows follow, each to a name. As Shesha, the serpent of a thousand mouths, they tell the faults of others with a thousand mouths. The anger in the line, the commentary says, is theirs. As King Prithu, who asked for ten thousand ears to hear the fame of the Lord, the commentary recalls, they hear the sins of others with ten thousand ears. As Indra, wine is always good to them. The commentary reads the verse’s one word two ways, as the wine the wicked like and as the army of the gods that is Indra’s good. The thunderbolt of harsh words is always dear to them. Indra’s thousand eyes watch the faults of others.
The fourth doha: the way of the wicked is to burn on hearing of the good of anyone, indifferent, foe, or friend. Knowing this, “this servant” joins both hands and entreats them with love. The next line admits what will come of it. The plea is made from his side, and from their side they will not be remiss. Rear crows with great love, and will they ever give up flesh?
One sea, and two things born of it
Now the two bows are made together, in one line. He bows to the feet of the saints and of the unholy both. Both give pain, and the difference is one of timing. The saint takes the breath away when he parts, and parting, the commentary says, is like dying. The unholy gives cruel pain when he arrives.
Both are born together in the world, as the lotus and the leech are, and then their qualities part. The lotus gives joy to the eye and the touch, the commentary says, while the leech draws blood at a touch. The good and the bad are nectar and wine. The one father of both is the bottomless sea that is the world. The shastras, the commentary adds, say nectar and wine both came up from one churning of the ocean.
Each wins fair fame or infamy by his own doings. Nectar, the moon, the Ganga, and the saint. Poison, fire, the river of the Kali age’s filth, and the hunter. Everyone knows the qualities and the faults of these eight, and each person is still pleased by what suits him. The commentary names the river the Karmanasha. The fifth doha ends on two praises. The good takes up goodness and the low holds to lowness. Nectar is praised for making immortal, and poison is praised for killing.
The swan that takes the milk
The tales of the sins and faults of the wicked and of the virtues of the saints are both seas without a shore, the poet says. He has described only some virtues and some faults, so that they can be recognized, since nothing is taken up or left behind until it has been recognized.
The creator made both the good and the bad, and the Vedas, weighing virtue and fault, set them apart. The Veda, the histories, and the Puranas say the creator’s world is kneaded with virtue and vice. The verse gives the kneading in pairs: pain and pleasure, sin and merit, day and night, the saint and the unholy, good birth and bad. The demon and the god, the high and the low, nectar and poison, a fair life and death, maya and Brahman, the soul and the lord of the world. Wealth and want, the pauper and the king, Kashi and Magadha, the Ganga and the Karmanasha, Marwar and Malwa. The brahmin and the eater of cows, heaven and hell, love and dispassion. The Vedas and the agamas have divided their virtues and their faults. The river of the Kali age’s filth is now named outright, beside the Ganga. Then the sixth doha: the maker made this world of inert and conscious things full of virtue and fault. The saints are swans, who take the milk of virtue and leave the water of fault.
When the creator gives that kind of discrimination, the mind leaves fault and fastens on virtue. Yet by the force of time, nature, and karma, even the good lapse from goodness under nature’s sway. The Lord’s devotees set such a lapse right and, crushing pain and fault, give clean fame. In the same way even the wicked do good when they find good company. Their dirty nature, unbroken, stays. The world worships deceivers in fine clothes, by the power of the clothes, until in the end they are exposed. The pretense fails to last, as it went with Kalanemi, Ravana, and Rahu. A saint is honored even in poor clothes, as Jambavan and Hanuman were. Loss from bad company and gain from good is known to everyone, in the world and in the Veda.
Dust climbs the sky with the wind, and the same dust meets the mud with water that runs low. The parrots and mynas in a saint’s house say Rama’s name. In the house of the unholy they count out abuse. In bad company smoke becomes soot. The same smoke, in good company, the commentary adds, becomes ink and writes the Puranas. With water, fire, and wind it becomes a cloud and gives the world its life.
Knowing all of them as full of Rama
The seventh doha comes in four parts. Planets, medicines, water, wind, and cloth, meeting a bad conjunction or a good one, become bad things or good things. People of fine discernment, the clever and thoughtful in the commentary’s words, see it happen. Light and dark are the same in both fortnights of the month. The creator made the difference only in their names, the bright fortnight and the dark. The world, taking one for the moon’s feeder and the other for its waster, gave the one fame and the other blame.
Then, knowing every being in the world, inert and conscious, as full of Rama, the poet bows to the lotus feet of all of them, always, with both hands joined. The last part lists them: gods, danavas, men, nagas, birds, pretas, ancestors, gandharvas, kinnaras, and night-walkers, the rakshasas. “I bow to all of you. Now, all of you, be gracious to me.” Ten kinds, the rakshasas beside the gods and the ancestors, and a request with a time in it: now.
The room before the story
From the first shloka to the last part of the seventh doha, the poet acts. Most of what he does is bow. The order holds: the makers of letters, then faith and trust, then the guru, the two walkers, Sita, and Rama. The guru again in the people’s tongue. Then the dust of the guru’s feet, until the dust is on his eye and he says “I describe,” before any deed of Rama is told.
Dasharatha, Kausalya, and Ayodhya are never named in these shlokas and these seven dohas. Some names from other stories do come, each for a purpose: Valmiki, Narada, and Agastya as witnesses. Rahu, Sahasrabahu, Ketu, Kumbhakarna, Shesha, Prithu, and Indra, lent to the wicked as their shapes. Kalanemi, Ravana, and Rahu again, as fine clothes found out. Jambavan and Hanuman, as saints in poor clothes. The story has yet to begin. This is the room before it, and these are the people in the room.
Two cupped hands held a flower in the doha to the saints. After that the hands that are joined are the poet’s own, joined twice. Toward the wicked, with the crows still eating flesh in the next line, and toward every being there is. Over all of it stands the reason from the seventh shloka. Svantah sukhaya, for the joy of his own heart, in the word the second shloka used for the place where the Lord stands. The last line of the seventh doha holds the word “now.”
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Balkand, the opening shlokas and sortha 1 to doha 7 (d), read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.