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The last episode closed on Shiva taking the name of Rama out of a story a thousand million long. This one begins with Shiva too, and with what the name has done for him. By its grace he is deathless, and though he dresses in inauspicious things, he is all auspiciousness. A rubric stands over this line in the Gita Press edition, the first pause of the month-long reading. A reader who takes the Manas in a month ends the first day here, with the name’s greatness in the ear and the story of Rama still to begin.
From Shiva the list of those the name has served runs down to sages, to Prahlada and Dhruva and Hanuman. To a low man, an elephant and a courtesan, and last to the poet, who says it turned him from hemp into tulsi. Then he speaks of the ages, of his own faults and his master’s way of forgetting them, and of the road the story traveled before it reached him. From Shiva to a crow, to two sages, and to a boy at Sukarkhet who heard it from his guru and understood little. Two garlands of likenesses follow, one for the story and one for Rama’s qualities. The stretch ends by telling the hearer to set wonder and doubt aside, since Rama has come down in many ways and the Ramayanas are a thousand million.
The name, the poet, and the line the story came down
The main figures in this episode
- The name the real hero of these eight dohas: the wish-tree of the Kali age, the one support in an age where works, devotion and discernment all fail. And something whose qualities, Tulsi says, Rama himself could not sing.
- Tulsidas the speaker, hemp turned tulsi, who calls himself a bad servant of a good master and the boy at Sukarkhet who could not understand the story. His name appears six times in these dohas.
- Shiva deathless by the name. The first maker of this story, who told it to Parvati and then gave it to Kakabhushundi. The story is as dear to him as the Narmada.
- Kakabhushundi the crow, to whom Shiva gave the story because he saw a devotee of Rama fit to hold it, and from whom it passed on.
- Yajnavalkya and Bharadvaja the speaker and the hearer whose dialogue the poet says he will tell. Alike in conduct, seeing all alike, and knowing past, present and future like a fruit on the palm.
- Tulsidas’s guru who told the story at Sukarkhet, again and again, to a boy too young to understand it. Tulsi never writes his name.
- Prahlada in the list twice: first made the best of devotees by repeating the name, then the model for everyone who repeats it.
- Hulsi a name that comes once, inside the likenesses for the story, and whom the commentary names as Tulsidas’s mother.
Whom the name has served
The name’s grace is shown first on Shiva, deathless and all auspiciousness in his inauspicious dress. The commentary notes that his attire is of the ill-omened kind and he is auspicious all the same. By the same grace Shuka, the Sanaka sages, the siddhas, sages and yogis enjoy the bliss of Brahman. In the last episode the poet put his head on the ground before Shuka, the Sanaka sages and Narada. Here they are shown with what the name gave them.
Narada knew the name’s power. Vishnu is dear to the whole world, the line says, and Narada is dear to Vishnu and to Shiva. Prahlada repeated the name, God was gracious to him, and he became the crest-jewel of devotees. Dhruva repeated it in distress and gained a place that never moves and has no equal. The commentary explains the distress as the sting of his stepmother’s words. It says his repeating had a wish in it. It names the place as his own realm, the realm of Dhruva, and gives the fruit to the name’s power all the same.
Then Hanuman. By remembering the pure name, he keeps Rama in his power. In the last episode Rama lived in Hanuman’s heart with his bow and arrows. Here he is held in Hanuman’s power, and what holds him is the remembering of a name.
The list goes lower and says so. Ajamila, whom the line calls low, an elephant, and a courtesan were all freed by the power of the name. Then the poet stops counting: how far could he tell the name’s greatness, when Rama himself cannot sing its qualities?
The doha ends the list on the poet. In the Kali age the name of Rama is the wish-tree and the house of welfare, which the commentary reads as the house of release. By remembering it Tulsidas turned from hemp into tulsi. The commentary grades the two plants, coarse and pure. Later in this stretch tulsi will be the plant dear to Rama, and it is also the poet’s own name.
Four ages, and the one in which the means fail
The name has freed beings from grief in all four ages, in past, present and future, and in all three worlds. The commentary takes this as a reach beyond the present age alone. The Vedas, the Puranas and the saints agree that the fruit of all merit is love for Rama, or, the commentary’s bracket adds, for his name.
Each age had its means. In the first, which the commentary names Satya, it was meditation. In the second, Treta, the sacrificial rite. In the Dvapara, worship pleases the Lord. The Kali age is only dirt and the root of dirt, and in it men’s minds are fish in the sea of sin. The commentary follows the picture through. A fish wants to stay in its water, so a mind that lives in sin stays there. Meditation, rite and worship go undone.
In that hard time the name is the wish-tree, which ends all the world’s snares when it is remembered. It grants what is wished. It is a friend for the next world and father and mother in this one. The commentary explains that as the Lord’s abode hereafter and care and protection here. In the Kali age there is neither works, nor devotion, nor discernment, and the name of Rama is the one support.
Two pictures from stories close the passage. The Kali age is Kalanemi, a mine of deceit, and the name is Hanuman, wise and able. Kalanemi is the rakshasa who will try to stop Hanuman in the war of this poem. And the name is the man-lion, whom the commentary names Narasimha, the age is Hiranyakashipu, the tormentor of the gods. Those who repeat the name are Prahlada. Prahlada was in the list a few lines back. Here he stands for everyone who repeats the name. The verb is in the future. The name will protect them by crushing the tormentor.
In good feeling or ill, in anger, even in idleness
The name works in any mood. Said with love, with enmity, in anger, or even out of idleness, it brings welfare in all ten directions. The commentary reads the first two as love and enmity and adds that any way at all will do.
Having said this, the poet acts on it. Remembering that name and bowing his head to Rama, he says, “I tell the story of Rama’s qualities.” The verb is in the present, and the telling begins in the same breath as the remembering.
The way of a good master, and a bad servant’s reckoning
When the poet comes to his own case, he starts with what Rama will do: set everything right for him, in every way. The commentary says that “everything” means a life gone to ruin, because Rama’s grace is never sated with giving grace. “Rama so good a master, and so bad a servant as I!” Rama has cared for him all the same, looking to his own nature.
Then the way of a good master, as the world and the Veda both know it. He hears a plea and recognizes the love in it. Rich and poor, villager and townsman, scholar and fool, the disgraced and the famous, good poets and bad, men and women. All praise their king as well as their wits allow. A good king, wise and courteous, born of a portion of God and most gracious, hears every one of them. He honors each with kind words, and recognizes in what each brings the words, the devotion, the humility and the manner. Each is honored as is fitting, the commentary adds.
That is how worldly kings behave. Rama, the king of Kosala, is the crest-jewel of the wise, and what pleases him is love unmixed, pure in the commentary’s word. Then the poet asks one question and leaves it open: who in the world is duller and dirtier of mind than I?
The doha answers with precedent. Rama, who made stones float as ships and turned monkeys and bears into wise ministers, will keep the love of a wicked servant too. “Everyone calls me his servant, and Rama bears the mockery of it: such a master as Sita‘s lord, and such a servant as Tulsidas.” The commentary adds that Rama lets the title stand without shame or protest. The joke is the distance between the master and the servant, and the master puts up with it.
The fault Rama forgets, and the heart he remembers
The poet’s boldness and his fault are great. Hearing his sin, even hell wrinkled its nose, meaning, the commentary says, that he would find no room even there. Knowing this, he is afraid, with a fear of his own making, an imagined fear in the commentary’s word. Rama never gave it a thought, not even in a dream. He heard, he saw, he examined the poet with the eye of his clear mind. He praised the poet’s devotion and his wit.
What is said can go wrong, the poet goes on. What matters is goodness in the heart, and Rama is pleased because he knows his servant’s heart. The commentary turns this on the poet himself. He goes on being called Rama’s servant and holds himself unworthy of the title in his heart. That is the goodness meant.
A fault once committed stays out of Rama’s mind, and he remembers the heart a hundred times. The commentary makes it his people’s hearts and their goodness. The proof comes from the story still to be told. Rama killed Vali, as a hunter kills, for a sin, and Sugriva later did the same wrong. So did Vibhishana. Rama gave it no thought, even in a dream, honored them both when he met Bharata, and praised them in the royal assembly. The lines leave the sin unnamed. What they say is that it was the same sin.
Rama sat under the tree and the monkeys sat on its branches, and he made them like himself. The commentary measures the distance: the Lord of the highest conduct on one side, monkeys leaping about the branches on the other. “Tulsi says, nowhere is there a master like Rama.” Then the poet speaks to Rama directly: “Rama, your goodness is good for everyone. If that is always true, then it is good for Tulsi too.”
So, having told his own virtues and faults, he bows his head once more to everyone. He says, “I describe Rama’s clear fame, hearing which the sins of the Kali age perish.” The faults were his own telling. The virtues are the two his master praised, his devotion and his wit.
How the story came down to here
The poet now says what he will tell: the handsome story Yajnavalkya told to the sage Bharadvaja, their dialogue, explained. He asks the good to hear it with joy.
Then he goes back to the story’s maker. Shiva made this story and, in his grace, told it to Parvati. Later he gave it to Kakabhushundi, whose name begins with the word for crow, because he recognized in him a devotee of Rama and one fit to receive it. That is the one link in the chain with a test. From the crow, Yajnavalkya received it and sang it to Bharadvaja. Those two, speaker and hearer, are alike in conduct, see all beings alike, and know the Lord’s lila. They know past, present and future by their own knowledge, as plainly as an amla fruit held on the palm, the commentary adds. Other wise devotees also tell it, hear it and understand it, in many ways.
The boy at Sukarkhet
The chain gets two more links, and the second is a boy. “I too heard that story from my own guru, at Sukarkhet, and did not understand it then, being a child and very unknowing.” The commentary glosses Sukarkhet as the field of the boar, and reads his understanding as poor. The guru keeps his title throughout and is never named.
The speaker and the hearer of Rama’s deep story are treasures of knowledge, the poet says. How could he understand it, a dull soul, deluded, in the grip of the Kali age’s dirt? Earlier in this preface he wrote his own name first among the cheats of that age.
Still, when the guru told it again and again, he understood something, as far as his mind allowed. That something he will bind in the common tongue so that his own mind may wake, or, in the commentary’s word, be satisfied. He will tell it with whatever strength of mind and discernment he has, as the Lord prompts him from within. The story he makes is to take away his own doubt, delusion and error. It is a boat across the river of existence.
What Rama’s story is likened to
The story made for one man’s mind is, in the next line, rest for the wise, delight for everyone, and the end of the Kali age’s sins. Then a garland of likenesses runs to the doha. The story is a peahen to the serpent that is the Kali age, and the kindling stick rubbed to raise the fire of discernment. It is the giver of wishes, the wish-cow in the commentary’s reading. The life-giving root for the good. A river of nectar on earth that ends fear, the fear of birth and death in the commentary. A she-serpent that eats the frogs of delusion. It destroys the hells as the mountain’s daughter, whom the commentary names Parvati, with Durga in its bracket, destroyed the army of the asuras. It does good to the saints, who are the gods here. The company of saints is a sea, the sea of milk in the commentary, and the story is its Lakshmi. It is as steady as the earth in bearing the world.
It blackens the faces of Yama’s messengers as the Yamuna does, and frees living beings as Kashi does. It is dear to Rama as the pure tulsi is, and to Tulsidas it does good from the heart, like Hulsi. The commentary says Hulsi was his mother. It is dear to Shiva as the daughter of the Mekala mountain is, the Narmada in the commentary’s naming. It is the store of all powers, joy and wealth. It is Aditi to the gods who are good qualities, and the height of devotion and love for Rama. The creatures and persons in this garland are all female: the peahen, the she-serpent, the mountain’s daughter, Lakshmi, Hulsi, the Narmada and Aditi.
The doha drops the word “like.” “The story of Rama is the Mandakini, a clear mind is Chitrakuta, Tulsi says, and handsome love is the forest where Sita and Rama roam.” Chitrakuta and the Mandakini are the hill and the river where Rama will live in his forest years, later in this poem. Here they are made of a mind and a love. That doha is the sixth and last place in this stretch where the poet writes his own name.
And what Rama’s qualities are likened to
A second garland begins, and its subject changes from the story to Rama’s deeds and qualities. His deeds are a wish-granting jewel worn by the good sense of the saints. His qualities do the world good and give release, wealth, dharma, and the supreme abode, as the commentary calls it.
They are the true teacher of knowledge, detachment and yoga. The physicians of the gods, the Ashvins in the commentary, for the terrible disease of worldly existence. The mother and father of love for Sita and Rama. The seed of all vows, dharma and rules. They destroy sin, affliction and grief and care for us in both worlds. They are brave ministers to the king that is thought, knowledge in the commentary’s reading. They are the pot-born sage, Agastya in the commentary, to the boundless sea of greed, there to drink it dry.
In the forest of the devotee’s mind they are lion cubs among the elephant herds of lust, anger and the age’s dirt. The commentary says the cubs are there to kill the herds. They are Shiva’s honored and best-loved guests. They are wish-giving clouds over the wildfire of poverty, the mantra and the great gem against the serpent of the senses, whose poison, the commentary says, they draw out. They wipe away the hard marks of a bad fate written on the forehead, in the commentary’s reading. They are sunlight on the darkness of delusion, and the cloud that feeds the rice that is the servants.
They give what is wished, like the best of wish-trees, the third wish-tree of this stretch. They are easy to serve and give joy, as Vishnu and Shiva do. They are stars in the autumn sky of a good poet’s mind, set there to make it shine, the commentary adds, and the life and wealth of Rama’s devotees. They are the fruit of all merit, like great enjoyments. Like the good, they serve the world without guile. They are swans on the Manas of the servants’ minds, the lake Manasarovar in the commentary. They purify like the Ganga’s waves.
The doha closes the garland with fire and moonlight. To the wrong road, bad argument and bad conduct, and to the Kali age’s deceit, pretense and hypocrisy, Rama’s qualities are what a fierce fire is to fuel. And his deeds are like the full moon’s rays, a joy to everyone. They are a special good and great gain to the night-lotuses and the chakora birds, who are the minds of the good.
A thousand million Ramayanas
The poet promises to sing the whole cause: how Parvati asked and how Shiva answered, explaining, made into a wondrous composition of the story.
Whoever has not heard this story before, he says, should feel no wonder on hearing it. The wise feel none, because they know the story of Rama has no measure in the world. Rama has come down in many ways, and the Ramayanas are a thousand million, and beyond counting. The last episode closed on a Rama-story a thousand million long, from which Shiva took one name. Here the same number counts the Ramayanas.
Because the ages of the world, the kalpas, differ, the great sages have sung the Lord’s deeds in many ways. So set doubt aside, the poet says, take this to heart, and hear the story with respect and love. At the start of the chain he asked his hearers for joy. Here he asks for love. Rama is endless, his qualities are endless, and his story is without measure. Those whose thinking is clear will feel no wonder at it.
The conditions set before the story
Eight dohas pass, and the story is where it was. Dasharatha, Ayodhya and Lakshmana go unnamed. What this stretch gives is the terms on which the events will be told. The name stands at the top, shown working on Shiva, on a courtesan, and on the poet. The age is one in which works, devotion and discernment all fail, and one support is left. The master hears a plea and recognizes love in it, forgets the fault and remembers the heart. He bears the mockery that comes with the servant he keeps. The story came down a chain of tellers to a guru who has only his title, with a boy at the near end, too young to understand. And the hearer is told how to come: with respect and love, doubt and wonder set aside, because the Ramayanas are a thousand million.
The poet writes himself into all of it. His name is in the verse six times. Twice it stands on the small side of a comparison, as the hemp that became tulsi and as the servant of Sita’s lord. Once it signs a praise: nowhere is there a master like Rama. Once it closes a condition: if Rama’s goodness is good for everyone, it is good for Tulsi. Once it sits beside Hulsi in a likeness for the story. And once it signs the doha that makes the story a river and a clear mind a hill. The only virtues he allows himself are the two his master praised, his devotion and his wit. He reports them as praise received. Everything else he says of himself is on the debit side: a bad servant, dull and dirty of mind. A dull soul in the Kali age’s grip, a child too young to understand.
The chain named here runs from Shiva to Parvati, from Shiva to Kakabhushundi, from the crow to Yajnavalkya. From Yajnavalkya to Bharadvaja, and from a guru at Sukarkhet to a boy. Valmiki is not named in it. His Ramayana gives its own account of how it came to be, in its opening cantos. The poet’s own word on how much room there is comes near the end: a thousand million Ramayanas, beyond counting.
The man who calls his mind small and dull gives one reason he can write at all. He will tell it as the Lord prompts him from within. The boy who sat at Sukarkhet and could not understand is the author. The remedy he reports is the plainest one there is, a guru who told it again and again and a mind that took in a little. From that little the poem in the common tongue is to be made, to wake its maker’s own mind. The next stretch turns to a lake, with good sense for its ground and the heart for its depth.
Source: the Gita Press edition of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, Balkand, doha 26 to 33, read with Hanuman Prasad Poddar’s Hindi commentary.