Bhavishyottar Purana, Pratisarga Parva, 4.20.Nabhadas writes in his Bhaktamal (literally, the Garland of bhakt or devotee) that Tulsidas was the re-incarnation of Valmiki in the Kali Yuga.

[19] Tulsidas was born on Saptami, the seventh day of Shukla Paksha, the bright half of the lunar Hindu calendar month Shraavana (July–August).

[32] As per the Mula Gosain Charita, he was born under the Abhuktamūla constellation, which according to Hindu astrology causes immediate danger to the life of the father.

[30][31][33][34] Due to the inauspicious astrological configurations at the time of his birth, on the fourth night he was sent away by his parents with Chuniya (some sources call her Muniya), a female house-help of Hulsi.

[28][32] When he was seven years old, his Upanayana ("sacred thread ceremony") was performed by Narharidas on the fifth day of the bright half of the month of Magha (January–February) at Ayodhya, a pilgrimage site related to Rama.

According to the Tulsi Prakash and some other works, Tulsidas was married to Ratnavali on the eleventh day of the bright half of the Kartik month (October–November) in Vikram 1604 (1561 CE).

[44] The Mula Gosain Charita gives an account of his travels to the four pilgrimages of Hindus (Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameshwaram) and the Himalayas.

In the woods, at the spot where the Sankat Mochan Hanuman Temple stands today,[44][51] Tulsidas firmly fell at the leper's feet, shouting "I know who you are" and "You cannot escape me".

[44][46][51] Tulsidas recalls this incident in a song of the Gitavali and laments how "his eyes turned his own enemies" by staying fixed to the ground and how everything happened in a trice.

[58] In another miracle described by Priyadas, the Mughal Emperor Akbar summoned Tulsidas on hearing of his bringing back a dead man to life.

[61][62][page needed] Suddenly an army of monkeys descended upon the town and wreaked havoc in all corners of Fatehpur Sikri,[61] entering each home and the emperor's harem, scratching people, and throwing bricks from ramparts.

[54][55][59][60] Ever since Akbar became a close friend of Tulsidas and he also ordered a firman that followers of Rama, Hanuman, and other Hindus, were not to be harassed in his kingdom.

On the eighth night, Shiva – whose famous Kashi Vishwanath Temple is located in Varanasi – is believed to have ordered Tulsidas in a dream to compose poetry in the vernacular instead of Sanskrit.

A popular legend goes that the Brahmins of Varanasi, who were critical of Tulsidas for having rendered the Sanskrit Ramayana in the Awadhi, decided to test the worth of the work.

[89] Some other ancient manuscripts are found in Varanasi, including one in possession of the Maharaja of Benares that was written in Vikram 1704 (1647), twenty-four years after the death of Tulsidas.

Hundred couplets of Tulsi) and the same was quoted by Rambhadracharya during the proceedings of the Ayodhya dispute in the Allahabad High court that influenced its judgment in 2010.

[98] Ram Chandra Shukla in his critical work Hindi Sahitya Ka Itihaas elaborates on Tulsidas' Lokmangal as the doctrine for social upliftment which made this great poet immortal and comparable to any other world littérateur.

[120] When Manu and Shatarupa perform penance, they crave to see that Supreme Lord "from a part of whose being emanate a number of Shivas, Brahmas and Vishnus.

They are finally satisfied only by the appearance of Rama, on whose left side is Sita, from a part of whom are born "countless Lakshmis, Umas (Parvatis) and Brahmanis (Sarasvatis).

[123] In the Lankakand, Tulsidas presents the universe as the cosmic form of Rama, in which Shiva is the consciousness, Brahma is the reason and Vishnu is his intelligence.

[127][128] In the words of Lutgendorf, Tulsidas' Rama is at once "Valmiki's exemplary prince, the cosmic Vishnu of Puranas, and the transcendent brahman of the Advaitins.

[138] At the beginning of the Ramcharitmanas, Tulsidas performs Samasti Vandana (obeisance to all beings) in which he bows down to the world also, saying it is "pervaded by" or "born out of" Sita and Rama.

[147] At the beginning of the Vinayapatrika, he bows to Ganesh, Surya, Shiva, Devi, Ganga, Yamuna, Varanasi and Chitrakoot, asking them for devotion towards Rama.

[151] Abdur Rahim Khankhana, famous Muslim poet who was one of the Navaratnas (nine-gems) in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar, was a personal friend of Tulsidas.

Rahim composed the following couplet describing the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas –[152][153] रामचरितमानस बिमल संतनजीवन प्रान । हिन्दुवान को बेद सम जवनहिं प्रगट कुरान ॥ rāmacaritamānasa bimala santanajīvana prāna । hinduvāna ko beda sama javanahi̐ pragaṭa kurāna ॥

"[20][154] The work Ramcharitmanas has been called "the Bible of North India" by both nineteenth century Indologists including Ralph Griffith, who translated the four Vedas and Valmiki's Ramayana into English, and modern writers.

[9] Nirala considered Tulsidas to be a greater poet than Rabindranath Tagore, and in the same league as Kalidasa, Vyasa, Valmiki, Homer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and William Shakespeare.

[9] Hindi litterateur Hazari Prasad Dwivedi wrote that Tulsidas established a "sovereign rule on the kingdom of Dharma in northern India", which was comparable to the impact of Buddha.

[159] Edmour J. Babineau, author of the book Love and God and Social Duty in Ramacaritmanasa, says that if Tulsidas was born in Europe or the Americas, he would be considered a greater personality than William Shakespeare.

[22] Ernest Wood in his work An Englishman Defends Mother India considered the Ramcharitmanas to be "superior to the best books of the Latin and Greek languages.