either employ or enjoin Sanskrit and the
meagre details which we have of his circle lead us to imagine him
surrounded by men of homely speech.

One current in this sea of poetry was Krishnaite and as such not
directly connected with Ramanand. Vidyapati[609] sang of the loves of
Krishna and Radha in the Maithili dialect and also in a form of
Bengali. In the early fifteenth century (c. 1420) we have the poetess
Mira Bai, wife of the Raja of Chitore who gained celebrity and
domestic unhappiness by her passionate devotion to the form of
Krishna known as Ranchor. According to one legend the image came to
life in answer to her fervent prayers, and throwing his arms round her
allowed her to meet a rapturous death in his embrace. This is
precisely the sentiment which we find later in the teaching of
Vallabhacarya and Caitanya. The hymns of the Bengali poets have been
collected in the _Padakalpataru_, one of the chief sacred books of the
Bengali Vaishnavas. From Vallabhacarya spring the group of poets who
adorned Braj or the Muttra district. Pre-eminent among them is the
blind Sur Das who flourished about 1550 and wrote such sweet lyrics
that Krishna himself came down and acted as his amanuensis. A
somewhat later member of the same group is Nabha Das, the author of
the Bhakta Mala or Legends of the Saints, which is still one of the
most popular religious works of northern India.[610] Almost
contemporary with Sur Das was the great Tulsi Das and Grierson[611]
enumerated thirteen subsequent writers who composed Ramayanas in some
dialect of Hindi. A little later came the Mahratta poet Tukaram (born
about 1600) who gave utterance to Krishnaism in another language.

Tulsi Das is too important to be merely mentioned as one in a list of
poets. He is a great figure in Indian religion, and the saying that
his Ramayana is more popular and more honoured in the North-western
Provinces than the Bible in England is no exaggeration.[612] He came
into the world in 1532 but was exposed by his parents as born under an
unlucky star and was adopted by a wandering Sadhu. He married but his
son died and after this loss he himself became a Sadhu. He began to
write his Ramayana in Oudh at the age of forty-three, but moved to
Benares where he completed it and died in 1623. On the Tulsi Ghat,
near the river Asi, may still be seen the rooms which he occupied.
They are at the top of a lofty building and command a beautiful view
over the river[4].

His R