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 Ramayana which is an original composition and not a translation of Valmiki’s work is one of the great religious poems of the world and not unworthy to be set beside Paradise Lost.  The sustained majesty of diction and exuberance of ornament are accompanied by a spontaneity and vigour rare in any literature, especially in Asia.  The poet is not embellishing a laboured theme:  he goes on and on because his emotion bursts forth again and again, diversifying the same topic with an inexhaustible variety of style and metaphor.  As in some forest a stream flows among flowers and trees, but pours forth a flood of pure water uncoloured by the plants