History of the Hanuman Chalisa
A short Awadhi hymn, one poet, and a question people ask often: who wrote it, when, and how did it travel so far? Here is what tradition and literary history actually support.
The Hanuman Chalisa is attributed to Goswami Tulsidas, the same 16th-century poet who composed the Ramcharitmanas. It was written in Awadhi. No calendar year is recorded in reliable sources; it sits within his known body of work. "Chalisa" means forty, for the forty chaupais at its centre.
Who wrote the Hanuman Chalisa?
Every traditional manuscript colophon, temple notice, and printed edition credits Goswami Tulsidas (also written Tulasi Das). He is the author of the Ramcharitmanas, the Dohavali, the Vinay Patrika, and other Awadhi and Braj works. The Chalisa sits naturally in that corpus: it is a short praise-hymn to Hanuman, the devoted servant of Ram, in the same everyday literary Hindi dialect that Tulsidas used to bring the Ramayana to ordinary listeners.
There is no serious competing claim. When you see the name Tulsidas on a Chalisa booklet, wall text, or audio description, that attribution is standard, not marketing copy.
When was it composed?
Here the honest answer is less neat than many websites admit. No verified manuscript carries a written date for the Chalisa. What we can say with confidence:
- Tulsidas lived in the 16th and early 17th centuries (roughly the late 1500s in popular reckoning of his active period).
- The language of the Chalisa matches his Awadhi period, the same language as the Ramcharitmanas.
- Oral circulation long preceded the print editions that most households use today.
Exact-year claims that circulate online usually come from later legend, not from dated colophons. If a source gives you a precise day and year without citing a manuscript, treat it as tradition rather than proof.
Why is it called "Chalisa"?
The word is simple arithmetic. Chalisa means "forty" in Hindi. The hymn has forty chaupais (couplet-style verses) in the middle, which is what the name points to. Readers who count every line on the page get a larger number, because the structure is actually:
| Part | Count | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Opening dohas | 2 | Invocation and setting the scene |
| Chaupais | 40 | Main body of praise (gives the name) |
| Closing doha | 1 | Colophon-style signature of Tulsidas and the final petition |
| Total verses | 43 | What reciters count as the full reading |
That distinction between forty and forty-three trips up beginners. The name honours the forty; the reading includes the dohas. Our doha guide walks through all three.
How is it related to the Ramcharitmanas?
Close cousins, not parent and child. The Ramcharitmanas is Tulsidas's massive retelling of the Ramayana in Awadhi. The Chalisa is a free-standing short hymn. It draws on the same universe: Ram's exile, Sita's abduction, the leap to Lanka, Hanuman's healing herbs, and the closing image of Tulsidas himself asking for grace through Hanuman.
They were composed in the same cultural moment, for overlapping audiences. Neither text quotes the other as a separate book would. Devotees simply keep both open on the same altar shelf.
How the text travelled: manuscript, temple, print
Short devotional poems survive by being useful. Three channels carried the Chalisa across centuries:
- Oral recitation. Daily paths in homes and Hanuman temples fixed the wording in memory. What people could recite, they rarely needed a book for.
- Manuscript copies. Scribes reproduced it with the rest of Tulsidas-related material. Copies vary in minor orthography the way all handwritten traditions do.
- Cheap print. From the era of letterpress chapbooks onward, pocket-sized Chalisa booklets made the text portable. Street stalls, railway vendors, and temple bookshops multiplied the same core text.
- Audio and now the web. Vinyl, cassette, CD, and streaming recitations introduced the tune and the words to listeners who never held a booklet. Sites like this one continue that chain carefully.
Because the hymn is short, complete copies were easy to keep exact. Longer works drift more; a forty-verse praise song is easy to verify line by line. That is one reason the text looks stable across regions.
Why it stayed popular when longer works faded from daily use
Not every great poem becomes a daily habit. The Chalisa did, for reasons that are practical as much as spiritual:
- Length. A complete reading fits a tea-break, not a retreat. Morning routines can absorb it without rearranging the day.
- Language. Awadhi that later audiences still largely understand, unlike dense Sanskrit liturgy.
- Structure. Forty parallel praise-verses are easier to learn than an epic; children can memorise it.
- Subject. Hanuman as protector and problem-solver matches the situations people bring to prayer: fear, exams, travel, illness of a relative, court dates.
- Portability. It fits on one folded leaflet. Temples could give it away.
Popularity is not a proof of theology. It is, however, a fair explanation of why a sixteenth-century poem still shows up in traffic-jam dashboards and Tuesday evening aartis.
What later tradition added
Over time, stories accreted around the hymn: visions of Hanuman approving it, temple legends, vows that produced specific counts like seven or eleven or one hundred and eight. Some of these are beloved local traditions. None of them change the basic literary facts: one Awadhi poet, forty central verses, broad attribution to Tulsidas.
When you read history pages that promise a "secret origin" or a miracle-dated first recitation, you are reading folklore. Folklore has a place in devotion. It just should not be filed under bibliography.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who wrote the Hanuman Chalisa?
Goswami Tulsidas, the 16th-century poet-saint also known for the Ramcharitmanas. The hymn is universally attributed to him in tradition and scholarship.
When was the Hanuman Chalisa written?
No exact year is recorded. It belongs to Tulsidas's lifetime in the 16th century, alongside his other Awadhi works. Claims of a precise calendar date are later tradition, not manuscript evidence.
Is the Hanuman Chalisa part of the Ramcharitmanas?
No. The Chalisa is a separate short hymn. It shares Tulsidas's Awadhi language and Ramayana devotion, but it is not a chapter of the Ramcharitmanas.