BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 91 of 150

Correct — C, Sahitya Lahari. The Sahitya Lahari belongs to Surdas, not to Tulsidas. Surdas (traditionally c. 1483–1563) was the blind Braj Bhasha poet of Krishna devotion, celebrated as the foremost of the Ashtachhap — the 'eight seals', the eight poet-disciples associated with Vallabhacharya's Pushtimarg, so called from the chhap or signature-line each placed at the end of a composition. The standard listing of Surdas's works is short and fixed: the Sur Sagar, the Sur Saravali and the Sahitya Lahari. Tulsidas (Rambola Dubey, born 11 August 1511 at Soron in Kasganj district, died 30 July 1623 at Banaras) belonged to the Ramanandi Sampradaya, followed Vishishtadvaita, and wrote of Rama. Biographers count twelve works as authentically his, split by language: six in Awadhi — Ramcharitmanas, Ramlala Nahachhu, Barvai Ramayan, Parvati Mangal, Janaki Mangal, Ramagya Prashna — and six in Braj — Krishna Gitavali, Gitavali, Kavitavali (also catalogued as Sahitya Ratna or Ratna Ramayan), Dohavali, Vairagya Sandipani and Vinaya Patrika. Read those two lists side by side and the three distractors are all inside the Braj half of the Tulsidas canon, while the key is the odd title from a different poet's canon altogether. There is a further sting the examiner almost certainly knew about: Tulsidas's Kavitavali is catalogued in standard reference listings under the alternative title Sahitya Ratna. Sahitya Ratna is Tulsidas; Sahitya Lahari is Surdas. One syllable divides the two titles, and the paper puts the Surdas one in a field of three Tulsidas ones. Nothing else in the question will do the separating for you. The two poets are near-contemporaries of the same Mughal century, both writing under and after Akbar; both used Braj Bhasha, which Surdas is credited with lifting from a plebeian speech into a literary language and which Tulsidas then used for half his own output; and both were anthologised together by Nabhadas in the Bhaktamal. Chronology, language and reputation all put them side by side. Only the title lists pull them apart, and Sahitya Lahari sits on Surdas's.

• (a)Geetavali — The Gitavali is Tulsidas's — a Braj retelling of the Rama story entirely in song, 328 padas arranged across the same seven kands as the Ramcharitmanas, with every verse set to a raga of Hindustani classical music so that it can actually be sung. That singability is exactly what makes it tempting: song-cycles in Braj feel like Surdas's territory. But the songs here are about Rama, and the collection sits in the six-work Braj half of the Tulsidas canon.
• (b)Vinay Patrika — The Vinaya Patrika, 'Petition of Humility', is Tulsidas's and is generally rated the second finest thing he wrote after the Ramcharitmanas. Its 279 Braj stanzas are cast as a literal legal petition filed in the court of Rama, pleading for bhakti, with the earlier hymns addressed to other deities before the plea reaches Rama himself. It is also the work in which Tulsidas records his own name Rambola and his abandonment as an infant — autobiography no other poet could have supplied.
• (d)Kavitavali — The Kavitavali — 'collection of kavittas', dated about 1608–1614 and also catalogued as Sahitya Ratna or Ratna Ramayan — is Tulsidas's Braj Ramayana composed wholly in the kavitta family of metres: kavitta, savaiya, ghanakshari and chhappaya. It runs to 325 verses in seven kands, 183 of them in the Uttarkand alone, and carries Tulsidas's bleakest personal verses. F. R. Allchin's English translation is published under the title Kavitavali, over Tulsidas's name.

North Indian devotional poetry of the sixteenth century runs in two great channels, and the whole question turns on telling them apart. The Rama channel is the Ramanandi tradition descending from Ramananda, in which Tulsidas is the towering figure; the Krishna channel is the Pushtimarg of Vallabhacharya, whose eight poet-disciples are the Ashtachhap, with Surdas at their head. Both are Saguna bhakti — devotion to God with form and attributes — as against the Nirguna line of Kabir and Nanak, so doctrine alone will not separate them. Nor will language. Surdas wrote in Braj Bhasha, the dialect of the Mathura–Vrindavan region where Krishna is said to have spent his childhood, and is credited with raising it from a plebeian speech to a literary one; but Tulsidas wrote in Sanskrit, Awadhi and Braj Bhasha, and half his authentic corpus is Braj. Nor even will the deity, because Tulsidas's Krishna Gitavali of 1607 is a cycle of 61 Braj songs to Krishna — 32 on the Balalila and Rasa Lila, 27 on the Krishna–Uddhava dialogue, two on the disrobing of Draupadi. What actually separates the two poets is the corpus itself: two short, closed, memorisable lists of titles. In the periodisation of Hindi literature made standard by Ramchandra Shukla, both belong to the Bhaktikal, the devotional age running roughly from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, and both are placed in its Saguna wing — Tulsidas in the Rambhakti branch, Surdas in the Krishnabhakti branch.

The reasoning route is elimination against a remembered list, and the list to remember is the shorter one. Surdas has exactly three standard titles — Sur Sagar, Sur Saravali, Sahitya Lahari. Two of the three carry the 'Sur' prefix and are therefore self-labelling; the third does not, and that is precisely why it is the one an examiner reaches for. Recall those three and the answer is immediate, whichever three Tulsidas works are set against it. Now notice which heuristics fail here, because each of them is a trap the paper has laid. Language fails: Gitavali, Vinaya Patrika and Kavitavali are all Braj, and so is everything of Surdas's. The '-avali' suffix fails, and fails badly: Gitavali, Kavitavali and Dohavali are Tulsidas's, but Sur Saravali carries the same ending and is Surdas's. Subject matter fails: Tulsidas wrote a full Krishna song-cycle, so a Krishna theme proves nothing. Even the word 'Sahitya' fails, because Tulsidas's Kavitavali is itself catalogued as Sahitya Ratna. The single discriminating fact, the one that survives all four of those failures, is membership of Surdas's three-title list — Sahitya Lahari is on it, and nothing else in the question is. One practical note on how to hold the list. Tulsidas's twelve are easiest stored by language, six Awadhi against six Braj, because the language split is itself examinable and because the three titles BPSC offered here are all drawn from the Braj six. Surdas's three are easiest stored as a unit, since the whole point of the question is that the third of them does not announce itself.

• Tulsidas — born Rambola Dubey on 11 August 1511 at Soron, Kasganj district, died 30 July 1623 at Banaras; teacher Narharidas; Ramanandi Sampradaya; philosophy Vishishtadvaita; honorifics Goswami, Abhinavavalmiki and Bhaktashiromani.
• Surdas — traditionally c. 1483–1563, the blind Braj Bhasha poet of Krishna; notable works Sur Sagar, Sur Saravali and Sahitya Lahari; reckoned the foremost of the Ashtachhap, the eight poet-disciples of Vallabhacharya's Pushtimarg named from the chhap or signature-line closing each composition.
• The Sur Sagar, 'Ocean of Sur', is arranged in twelve parts on the model of the Bhagavata Purana and is built of padas of six to ten rhymed verses; many poems now in it were composed by later hands writing in Sur's name, and modern scholarship treats the Surdas–Vallabhacharya discipleship itself as hagiography from the Chaurasi Vaishnavan ki Varta rather than documented biography.
• Twelve works are counted as authentically Tulsidas's — six Awadhi (Ramcharitmanas, Ramlala Nahachhu, Barvai Ramayan, Parvati Mangal, Janaki Mangal, Ramagya Prashna) and six Braj (Krishna Gitavali, Gitavali, Kavitavali or Sahitya Ratna, Dohavali, Vairagya Sandipani, Vinaya Patrika); the Hanuman Chalisa, Hanuman Bahuk and Bajrang Baan are attributed to him outside that twelve.
• The Ramcharitmanas was composed 1574–1576 in Awadhi: about 12,800 lines in 1,073 stanzas across seven kands, in eighteen metres — ten Sanskrit and eight Prakrit; the Dohavali of 1581 holds 573 doha and sortha verses, 85 of which also appear in the Ramcharitmanas.

• Using language as the test — Gitavali, Vinaya Patrika and Kavitavali are all in Braj Bhasha, the same language Surdas wrote in, so 'Braj means Surdas' is false
• Using the '-avali' ending as the test — Sur Saravali is Surdas's and carries exactly the same suffix as Tulsidas's Gitavali, Kavitavali and Dohavali
• Assuming a Krishna theme rules Tulsidas out — his Krishna Gitavali of 1607 is 61 Braj songs to Krishna, and Sahitya Ratna is a catalogue title for his own Kavitavali, one syllable from Surdas's Sahitya Lahari

BPSC asks this as a bare recall filter — one poet, four titles, find the outsider — and stays inside the school Hindi syllabus that a Bihar candidate has already met, so a memorised two-column list of Tulsidas and Surdas titles answers it in seconds. UPSC almost never sets a naked title-to-author item on the bhakti poets; it goes at the same canon sideways, asking which poet first preached in Hindi, who composed a named Braj work such as Prem Vatika, or which figure in a list was not a bhakti proponent at all — so the same facts are needed, but with the sect, the language and the century attached rather than the title alone.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 'Sur Sagar' and 'Sur Saravali' were composed by which of the following poets ?

  • (a)Tulsidas
  • (b)Surdas
  • (c)Kabir
  • (d)Raskhan

  Answer(b) Surdas — the Sur Sagar, Sur Saravali and Sahitya Lahari are the three works standardly listed under Surdas's name; Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitmanas and Vinaya Patrika, Kabir the nirguna dohas and sakhis, and Raskhan the Prem Vatika.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas was composed principally in which language ?

  • (a)Braj Bhasha
  • (b)Maithili
  • (c)Awadhi
  • (d)Sanskrit

  Answer(c) Awadhi — the Ramcharitmanas (1574–1576) is Tulsidas's Awadhi rendering of the Rama narrative in seven kands; his Gitavali, Kavitavali, Dohavali and Vinaya Patrika are in Braj Bhasha, which is why 'Tulsidas equals Awadhi' alone is an unsafe rule.