Ramcharitmanas
Topic: Print Culture and the Modern World · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"
Meaning
The Ramcharitmanas is a retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. He wrote it in Awadhi, a form of Hindi, in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, printing made it cheap and easy to carry, so it reached far more people. This made it a key example of how print spread Hindu religious texts in Indian languages (vernacular texts).
Example
The first printed Ramcharitmanas came out from Calcutta in 1810. By the middle of the century, cheap lithographic editions (printed from flat stone) had flooded north India. People could read them anywhere, and readers often read them aloud to people who could not read.
Don't confuse with
- Valmiki's Ramayana: the much older Sanskrit epic. The Ramcharitmanas is Tulsidas's later retelling in Awadhi.
Related concepts
- Rammohun Roy
- Sambad Kaumudi
- Samachar Chandrika
- Mirat-ul-Akhbar
- Bombay Samachar
- Rast Goftar
- Deoband Seminary