on its bank, so in the heart of Tulsi Das the love of God welled up in a mighty fountain ornamented by the mythology and legends with which he bedecked it, yet unaffected by them.  He founded no sect, which is one reason of his popularity, for nearly all sects can read him with edification, and he is primarily a poet not a theologian.  But though he allows himself a poet’s licence to state great truths in various ways, he still enunciates a definite belief.  This is theism, connected with the name Rama.  Since in the north he is the author most esteemed by the Vishnuites, it would be a paradox to refuse him that designation, but his teaching is not so much that Vishnu is the Supreme Being who becomes incarnate in Rama, as that Rama, and more rarely Hari and Vasudeva, are names of the All-God who manifests himself in human form.  Vishnu is mentioned as a celestial being in the company of Brahma,[613] and so far as any god other than Rama receives attention it is Siva, not indeed as Rama’s equal, but as a being at once very powerful and very devout, who acts as a mediator or guide.  “Without prayer to Siva no one can attain to the faith which I require."[614] “Rama is God, the totality of good, imperishable, invisible, uncreated, incomparable, void of all change, indivisible, whom the Veda declares that it cannot define."[615] And yet, “He whom scripture and philosophy have sung and whom the saints love to contemplate, even the Lord God, he is the son of Dasarath, King of Kosala."[616] By the power of Rama exist Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, as also Maya, the illusion which brings about the world.  His “delusive power is a vast fig-tree, its clustering fruit the countless multitude of worlds, while all things animate and inanimate are like the insects that dwell inside and think their own particular fig the only one in existence."[617] God has made all things:  pain and pleasure, sin and merit, saints and sinners, Brahmans and butchers, passion and asceticism.  It is the Veda that distinguishes good and evil among them.[618] The love of God and faith are the only road to happiness.  “The worship of Hari is real and all the world is a dream."[619] Tulsi Das often uses the language of the Advaita philosophy and even calls God the annihilator of duality, but though he admits the possibility of absorption and identification with the deity, he holds that the double relation of a loving God and a loving soul constitutes greater bliss.  “The saint was not absorbed into the divinity for this reason that he had already received the gift of faith."[620] And in a similar spirit he says, “Let those preach in their wisdom who contemplate Thee as the supreme spirit, the uncreate, inseparable from the universe, recognizable only by inference and beyond the understanding; but we, O Lord, will ever hymn the glories of thy incarnation.”  Like most Hindus he is little disposed to enquire what is the purpose of creation, but he comes very near to saying that God has evolved the world by the