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The poem has still to tell a line of the story of Rama. So far the poet has bowed to the makers of letters and to his guru, to the saints, the wicked and every being there is. To the poets of three tenses, the Vedas, the planets, and Shiva and Parvati. Now his bows come to a place. He bows to the city of Ayodhya and to the river Sarayu, which washes away the sins of the Kali age. Then to the men and women of the city, because Rama’s fondness for them is not small. From the city the bows move inward, name by name, through Rama’s family and his servants. They end on Sita and Rama together.
The second half is an argument. With the same verb that bowed to Ayodhya, the poet bows to a name. He says what the name is and does. Then, marking it as his own opinion, he claims that the name is greater than Brahman and greater than Rama. He sets Rama’s deeds beside the name’s deeds one by one. He closes on Shiva’s choice: out of a Rama-story a thousand million long, Shiva took this name. The poem is the Ramcharitmanas, and its story has still to begin.
The list of bows, and the name of Rama
The main figures in this episode
- Rama bowed to after everyone joined to him and before his own name. The moon that rose from Kausalya. Living, bow in hand, in Hanuman’s heart. Then set, deed by deed, beside his own name.
- Sita Janaka’s daughter and the world’s mother, whom the poet asks for a clear mind. One with Rama in the last bow to persons, as speech is one with its meaning.
- Dasharatha the king of Ayodhya, saluted with all his queens. The sortha says two things of him, his true love for Rama, and how he died of the parting.
- Bharata the first of the brothers to be bowed to, whose discipline is past describing and whose mind never leaves Rama’s feet.
- Lakshmana whose fame is the staff that holds up the flag of Rama’s fame. Shesha, the thousand-headed serpent, come down to lift the earth’s fear.
- Hanuman the one figure the poet entreats, introduced by a single fact: Rama himself told his fame.
- The name of Rama two letters, treated here like a person: bowed to, given witnesses, given a place on the tongue, and argued for.
First the city, then its people
The first bow of this stretch goes to no person. It goes to Ayodhya, a most holy city, and to the Sarayu, the river in which the sins of the Kali age are destroyed. Then come the men and women of the city. The reason given for bowing to them is on Rama’s side: his fondness for them is “not small,” which the commentary reads as great.
The next line goes further. The heap of sins of those who slandered Sita was destroyed, and they were freed of grief and given a home. The verse names them only by what they did. The commentary names Rama as the one who did all three, and reads the home as his own realm. So Tulsi’s order is this: first Rama’s fondness for the people of Ayodhya. And at once after it, the word that even those who did the worst were cleared, consoled, and settled.
Kausalya comes next, bowed to as the eastern quarter of the sky, whose fame has spread across the world. From that east Rama rose like the moon, joy to the world and frost to the lotuses that are the wicked. Then Dasharatha with all his queens, the image of merit and welfare, saluted in deed, mind, and speech. Of the queens only Kausalya has a name, and she has it as a direction. The poet introduces himself to the royal couple through their son: show me grace, knowing me as your son’s servant. The creator, the line adds, grew great by making them, Rama’s father and mother.
A dear body, let go like a straw
The first sortha of this stretch belongs to the king of Ayodhya and says two things about Dasharatha. His love for Rama was true. And when Rama, kind to the humble, was parted from him, he gave up his dear body as if it were a straw. The sortha chose the word dear for the body. A loved body let go like a straw is the proof of the love the first line called true.
The second father follows at once. The verse calls him Videha, a name that means bodiless, and the commentary names him King Janaka. He is bowed to with his household. His love for Rama was hidden. He kept it out of sight in yoga and in worldly enjoyment, and at the sight of Rama it showed itself. What yoga and enjoyment together had kept hidden, one look at Rama brought out.
The flag and its staff
The brothers’ turn begins with Bharata, and the line itself says “first.” The commentary’s bracket adds that he is first among the brothers. His discipline and his vow are past describing, says a poet who is in the middle of describing everyone. Then he gives Bharata a small picture: a bee drawn to the lotus of Rama’s feet, which never leaves their side.
Lakshmana comes next. His feet are cool, handsome, and a joy to devotees. Then the likeness: Rama’s fame is a clean flag, and Lakshmana’s fame is its staff. The commentary says what a staff does. It lifts the flag and lets it fly. In the same breath the verse says who this brother is. He is Shesha, the serpent of a thousand heads, the cause of the world. The commentary opens that as the one who holds the world up on those heads. He came down to take away the earth’s fear. The poet asks him, an ocean of mercy and a mine of virtues, to be always favorable to him.
Whose fame Rama told himself
The fourth brother gets one line. The verse calls him by a title that means destroyer of enemies, brave and of fine conduct. The commentary names him Shatrughna. The fact that places him is the third one. He follows Bharata.
Then Hanuman, and the verb changes. Everyone else in this stretch is bowed to. Hanuman is entreated, with the verb a man uses when he asks something of someone. His introduction is a fact about Rama. Rama himself told Hanuman’s fame, with his own mouth, the commentary adds. Earlier in the poem, Valmiki, Narada and Agastya told their own histories with their own mouths. Hanuman’s fame was told by someone else, and that someone is Rama.
The sortha that follows bows to him as fire to the forest of the wicked and a mass of knowledge. It calls his heart a house in which Rama lives, holding his bow and arrows. Of all the bows in this stretch, this is the one place where Rama is said to live, and the place is a heart.
In low bodies, and wanting nothing
After Hanuman the list widens. The poet bows to the king of the monkeys, the kings of the bears and of the rakshasas, and Angada with the whole monkey company. Because they found Rama in low bodies. The verse names only Angada. The commentary names the three kings, Sugriva, Jambavan and Vibhishana, and reads the low bodies as an animal’s and a rakshasa’s. Then he bows to every worshiper of Rama, birds, beasts, gods, men and asuras together, all of whom serve Rama and want nothing for it. The asuras stand in the list beside the gods.
Before the sages, Shuka, Sanaka and his brothers, and Narada, the poet puts his head on the ground, the only bow in this stretch made that way. He asks them for grace as their servant.
Then Sita, and the verb changes a second time. Hanuman was entreated. Sita is won over, propitiated. She is Janaka’s daughter, the mother of the world, most dear to Rama. The poet asks her for one thing: by her grace, a clear mind. Last of all comes Rama, after everyone who belongs to him. The poet bows to his all-capable feet in mind, speech and deed. Rama holds a bow and arrows here too, as he did in Hanuman’s heart. He breaks his devotees’ troubles and gives them joy.
Speech and its meaning
The doha that closes the bows to persons sets out two pairs: speech and its meaning, water and its wave. Each pair has two names and is one thing, “called different and undivided.” In the same way the poet bows to the feet of Sita and Rama. The one thing the second line says of them is that the afflicted are most dear to them.
The bows began, at the poem’s first word, with the makers of letters and of meanings. The bows to persons end on a pair drawn from speech and what speech means. The next line bows to a name. When the argument comes to set the name beside the one it names, it will call the two alike.
A bow to one word
“I bow to the name Rama,” the next line says, with the verb that bowed to Ayodhya. Between those two bows the whole household has passed, the servants, the sages and Rama himself. The list that began at a city has come to rest on a word.
The name is the cause of fire, of the sun, and of the moon. The commentary explains that its three sounds are the seed-syllables of those three. It is the form of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and the breath of the Vedas. It is at once without qualities, nirguna, and a treasury of qualities. The word nirguna will come back later, paired with saguna, with qualities.
Then the witnesses. Shiva repeats this name as his great mantra, and his teaching of it in Kashi is the cause of release. He uses himself what he gives to others. Ganesha knows its greatness and is worshiped first by its power. The first poet, Valmiki in the commentary, became pure by repeating it backwards, the two sounds said in the other order, as the commentary explains. Said in the wrong order, the name still worked. Shiva told Parvati that the one name equals a thousand names, and on his word she repeats it with him. Seeing that love for the name in her heart, Shiva was glad and made her, the ornament of women, his own ornament. The commentary reads this as taking her into his body as its half. And Shiva knows the name’s power so well that the kalakuta poison gave him the fruit of nectar. The poison stayed what it was, and what came of it changed.
Two letters
Now Tulsi takes the name apart into its two letters and looks for likenesses. He starts with a field. Devotion to Rama is the rainy season, the good servants are the rice, and the two letters are Savan and Bhadon. They are the two months of the rains when the water comes down and the crop depends on it.
Then something personal. The two letters are as dear to him as Rama and Lakshmana. Describe them one at a time and the love seems to divide, though by nature they keep company, as Brahman and the living soul do.
The likenesses then come in a run, and nearly all of them come in twos, because the thing described is two. The letters are the two eyes of the alphabet, which the commentary makes the body they belong to. The life of the devotees, sweet to say, to hear and to remember, joy to all, gain in this world and sustenance in the next. They are brothers like Nara and Narayana, keepers of the world and saviors of devotees. Two earrings on devotion, pictured as a woman. The clean moon and sun, for the world’s good. The taste and the satisfaction of the nectar of release, as the commentary names the good state. The tortoise and Shesha, who bear the earth. Bees in the lotus of the devotee’s mind. And to the tongue, which is Yashoda here, they are Hari and the plough-bearer, whom the commentary names Krishna and Balarama. Three pairs of brothers come into the likenesses, and each time both are kept.
The doha seats the two letters where they actually sit in writing. One is an umbrella and one a crest-jewel, above all the other letters. The commentary matches the picture to the script. The umbrella is the r-mark written above the line, and the crest-jewel is the nasal dot of the m. An umbrella and a crest-jewel are both carried above the head.
Which is greater, the name or the form
Here praise becomes argument. First the poet binds the name to the one it names. To the understanding, name and named are alike, and the love between them is like a master’s and his follower’s. The commentary draws it out. As a servant walks behind his master, Rama walks behind his own name and comes wherever it is spoken. Name and form are both attributes of the Lord, both past telling and without beginning, and a pure mind grasps them.
Then a warning the reader should keep in mind for what follows. To say which of the two is greater and which smaller is an offense. Hear the difference in their qualities, and the good will understand for themselves. The telling is the poet’s work and the deciding is the hearer’s.
He gives two tests, built the same way and run in opposite directions. Put a form in the palm of someone’s hand, and if he does not know its name he will fail to recognize it. Remember a name without ever seeing the form, and the form comes into the heart, with special love. Forms depend on names. Without the name there is no knowing the form.
The story of how name and form work is past telling, sweet to understand and impossible to describe. And between the nirguna and the saguna the name stands as a fine witness, a quick-witted interpreter that makes both known. The name is placed between them here. The claim that comes next grows from that place.
A lamp set on the threshold
The doha speaks to the poet by name: if you want light inside and outside, Tulsi, set the jewel-lamp of Rama’s name on your tongue, the threshold of the door. The commentary reads the door as the mouth. A threshold belongs to both sides of a door. A lamp set there lights both rooms at once, which is exactly the two lights the doha asks for.
Then the poet shows the lamp at work in four kinds of hands. Yogis who have left the world the creator made, and are free of desire, stay awake by repeating the name, in what the commentary calls the day of knowledge. They taste the bliss of Brahman, past telling, flawless, without name or form. They reached what has no name by the road of a name. Those who want to know the hidden ways of the divine come to know them by repeating the name. Seekers who repeat it with absorption become perfected and gain the minute-making power and the other powers, eight in the commentary’s count. And devotees in distress repeat it, and their troubles end and they are happy.
So, the verse says, Rama’s devotees are of four kinds, and all four are virtuous, sinless and generous. The commentary names them by their reason: for gain, for relief from trouble, from the wish to know the Lord, and the knower. His love comes naturally from knowing him truly. The one who repeats the name for a power is described in the same words as the rest. For all four quick-witted devotees the name is the support, and the knower is especially dear to the Lord. The name has power in all four ages and in all four Vedas, and above all in the Kali age, where there is no other means. The poet has already placed himself in that age, first among its cheats.
The last doha of this section adds those who want nothing at all. They are absorbed in devotion to Rama, and they too have made their minds fish in a lake of nectar, the nectar being love for the name. The commentary says why. They want neither pleasure nor release. They still do not wish to be apart from the name for a moment, as a fish does not wish to leave the water.
Greater than the nirguna, and the reason
Now comes the claim. Nirguna and saguna are the two forms of Brahman, both past telling, fathomless, without beginning, matchless. The poet raises them to their full height first. Then: “In my opinion the name is greater than both,” because by its own strength it has brought both under its sway. A little earlier this same poet called it an offense to say which is greater. He says it now as his own view. In the next line he adds a disclaimer: let the good not take this for their servant’s boldness. I am speaking of the trust, the love and the liking of my own mind.
A likeness follows. Knowing the two Brahmans is like fire. One fire is in the wood and unseen, the other is out in the open. The commentary matches the hidden fire to the nirguna and the visible one to the saguna. Both are hard to reach, and through the name both become easy. That, he says, is why he has called the name greater than Brahman and greater than Rama. The reason he gives is reach.
Then he brings the argument down to earth. Brahman is all-pervading, one, undying, being, consciousness and bliss. Such a Brahman, unchanging, lives in every heart, and still every creature in the world is poor and miserable. When the name is understood and practiced, the same Brahman is revealed, as a gem’s worth is revealed once someone knows the gem. The commentary spells out both halves: understood means knowing the name’s true nature and power, and practiced means repeating it with faith.
The doha closes one half of the case and opens the other. In this way the name’s power is far greater than the nirguna. “And now, by my own thinking, I say the name is greater than Rama.” The commentary’s bracket marks this Rama as the saguna one. It is the third time in this block. The poet has put his own name to the claim: in my opinion, the trust and love and liking of my mind, and by my own thinking.
And greater than the saguna Rama too
From here to the end the poet sets one deed of Rama’s beside one deed of the name’s. The first pair fixes the terms. Rama took a human body for his devotees’ sake, bore hardship, and made the good happy. Devotees who repeat the name with love become, with ease, homes of joy and welfare. On one side a body taken and hardship borne. On the other, ease.
Rama saved one ascetic’s wife. The name has set right the ruined minds of tens of millions of the wicked. One and tens of millions, face to face in one line. The commentary names the wife Ahalya. For the good of a sage, Rama destroyed Suketu’s daughter with her army and her son. The name destroys its servants’ faults, sorrows and false hopes as the sun destroys the night. The commentary names the sage Vishvamitra, the daughter Tataka and her son Subahu. Rama himself broke Shiva’s bow. The name breaks the fear of worldly existence. The verse calls the bow Bhava’s, a name of Shiva, and bhava is also the word for the round of birth and death. So the bow Rama broke and the fear the name breaks share a word.
Rama made the Dandaka forest handsome. The name has made countless minds pure. Rama crushed the hosts of the rakshasas. The name uproots all the sins of the Kali age. Rama gave a good end to Shabari and the vulture, good servants both, the vulture being Jatayu in the commentary. The name has lifted countless wicked people, and the Vedas know its virtues. On Rama’s side stand good servants and an ascetic’s wife. On the name’s, the wicked, past counting.
Rama kept Sugriva and Vibhishana under his protection, as everyone knows. The name has shown favor to many poor people, and its renown shines in the world and in the Veda. Two, both named. Many, none named. Rama gathered an army of bears and monkeys and labored hard over the bridge. At the taking of the name the ocean of existence dries up. “Think about it in your minds, you who are good,” the poet says here, and leaves the sum to them.
The last pair is the highest. Rama killed Ravana with all his family in battle, entered his own city with Sita. He became king, with Ayodhya his capital, while gods and sages sang his virtues. Servants who remember the name with love win, without labor, against the mighty army of delusion. They wander absorbed in their own joy, and by the name’s grace have no worry even in dreams. Against a battle won stands an army beaten without labor, and against a throne, freedom from worry, awake and asleep.
Rama’s deeds on this list run from the human body taken for his devotees to the throne of Ayodhya: the ascetic’s wife, the sage’s good, the bow. The Dandaka forest, the rakshasa hosts, Shabari and the vulture, Sugriva and Vibhishana, the army and the bridge, the death of Ravana. They are set down before the story has begun, each one as a weight for measuring something else.
The case closes on a precedent. The name is greater than Brahman and greater than Rama, the giver of boons even to those who give boons. Out of a Rama-story a thousand million long, Shiva took this name, knowing its worth in his heart. The commentary reads the taking as drawing out the essence. The first witness of this half was Shiva, repeating his great mantra in Kashi, and the kalakuta story was his too. The one called first is the one the argument ends on.
The tongue, and love as the condition
For all they say about the name, these dohas give it no method: no count, no hour, no posture, no rosary. One place is named for it, the tongue, and one condition, love. The lamp is set on the tongue. The yogis and the seekers repeat the name with the tongue. The tongue is Yashoda to the two letters. The devotees who become homes of joy repeat it with love. The servants who beat the army of delusion remember it with love. Those who want nothing keep their minds in a lake of love for it. The form that comes into the heart through the name comes with special love.
There is a tension in these lines. One line calls it an offense to say which of name and form is greater. A few dohas later the same poet says the name is greater than both forms of Brahman and greater than Rama. He handles it in his own words. Three times he writes his own hand against the claim: in my opinion, the trust and love and liking of my mind, by my own thinking. He gives his view, sets out his reasons and his pairs, and then tells the good to think it over.
Some things are missing from the bows. Of the queens only Kausalya has a name, and she has it as the east. Hanuman is given fire and knowledge, and the rest of his lines belong to Rama: the fame Rama told himself, and Rama living in his heart. And Rama comes last. After his mother, his father, his wife’s father, his brothers, his monkeys and bears, the sages and Sita, when every name joined to his has had its bow.
Read whole, the second half keeps a ledger. Rama’s side carries costs: a body taken, hardship borne, an army gathered, hard labor over the bridge, a battle fought. On the name’s side the same words keep coming back: with ease, without labor, easy to remember, at the mere taking of the name. What these dohas call greatest is what is easiest for anyone to reach.
Twice in this stretch the poet changes his posture, and each time once. He entreats Hanuman, and he propitiates Sita. Everyone else, the city, the river, the mother, the father, the father-in-law, the brothers, the monkeys, the sages and Rama, is bowed to. Of the two, only Sita’s line says what he asks for, a clear mind. Hanuman’s line holds only his introduction, that Rama told his fame.
The proof that closes the case is a choice. Out of a Rama-story a thousand million long, Shiva took this name, knowing its worth in his heart. The poem about to begin tells that same story of Rama. Its poet has already said, before the first scene, which part of it he holds greatest.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Balkand, sortha 16 to doha 25, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.