Which one of the following is not written by Tulsidas?

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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 word 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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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) 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) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2025 Q91 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q91 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer