composed in the ninth or tenth century in South India, casts this narrative in a
devotional light, particularly in book X which becomes the inspiration for much
Va i s.n.ava literature in North India (Entwistle 1987: 22–42). More than a story,
this drama becomes map and mirror for divine-human love, an eternal drama
in which each devotee has a role. A tradition of religious dramatic performance
also develops, with the texts of these plays forming another genre of devotional
literature, spiced with humor, social critique, and romance and fully enacted
in Vr.nda ̄van and elsewhere on a regular basis (Hawley 1981; Wulff 1984;
Haberman 1988). In his songs Su ̄rda ̄s invites the hearer inside this world and
into the emotions of its characters, taking on multiple personas, as do other
Va i s.n.ava poets.
Even as Vallabha ̄ca ̄rya’s disciples formed the Pustimarg in Vr.nda ̄van, in
Bengal another Kr.s.n.a devotee, Caitanya, took birth. An ecstatic saint who often
fell into trance and states of divine madness, he is said to have been an incar-
nation of both Ra ̄dha ̄ and Kr.s.n.a. All the possible range of emotions associated
with love wracked his body and heart, from the deepest despair at his divine
beloved’s absence to the supreme bliss of union. He popularized a form of
worship involving singing and dancing, and the six Goswamis who were his
disciples also went to Vr.nda ̄van in the early sixteenth century and founded
the Gaudiya Vais.n.ava sect: Ru ̄ p, Sana ̄tan, Jiv, Gopal Bhatt, Raghunathdas, and
Raghunath Bhatt. The saint Nimbarka had arrived there earlier and founded
anothersamprada ̄ydevoted to Kr.s.n.a and named after him, and Hit Harivams, a
contemporary of Ru ̄ p and Sana ̄tan, was the founding figure of a fourth, the
Ra ̄dha ̄vallabh samprada ̄y, which glorified and deified Ra ̄dha ̄, as the songs of its
founder clearly articulate (McGregor 1992: 88–9). The convergence of these
groups on the site of Kr.s.n.a’s legendary incarnation made this a major center of
Va i s.n.ava literary production in the sixteenth century, and the language of this
region, Braj Bha ̄s.a, predominated (Entwistle 1987: 136–73).
Sects continued to multiply as the followers of other extraordinary devotees
formed new communities to continue their founder’s particular teachings,
among others the Ramsnehi samprada ̄ysin eighteenth-century Rajasthan, advo-
cating a blending ofnirgun.andsagun.devotion in their praise of Ra ̄m. A tradi-
tion of S ́aiva devotion had developed in Kashmir, and devotion to the Devı ̄
especially in her forms as Durga and Ka ̄lı ̄ grew, particularly in Bengal.
Ramprasad Sen is perhaps the most well-known Bengali poet addressing Ka ̄lı ̄
(Nathan and Seely 1982), and Lalla the most famous Kashmiri S ́aiva poet saint
(Odin 1999). Yet there were other saints also in North India who seem to have
been appreciated by many but to have stood outside of formal sectarian affilia-
tion, their songs not a part of any official liturgy. Tulsı ̄da ̄s and Mı ̄ra ̄baı ̄ are two
such saints.
Tulsı ̄da ̄s was an educated brahmanfrom eastern India who settled in Banaras.
Though he composed a large number of songs in praise to Ra ̄m and a small
set also for Kr.s.n.a, he is most well-known for his telling of the story of Ra ̄m and
Sı ̄ta ̄ entitled the Ramcaritmanasor “The Holy Lake of the Acts of Ra ̄m,” com-
posed in the vernacular language of Avadhi in the latter half of the sixteenth
north indian hindi devotional literature 191