Tulsidas

Tulsidas was a Hindu poet-saint of 16th-century northern India, devoted to the god Rama, who spent most of his life in Varanasi and Ayodhya. A Brahmin schooled in Sanskrit and the Vedas, he is best known for the Ramcharitmanas, a retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana in the vernacular Awadhi, which he began at Ayodhya in 1574. Popular belief also makes him the author of the Hanuman Chalisa, and he is credited with founding the Sankat Mochan Hanuman Temple in Varanasi and with starting the Ramlila plays, a folk-theatre version of the Ramayana.