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Marriage and renunciation

There are two contrasting views regarding the marital status of Tulsidas. 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). Ratnavali was the daughter of Dinbandhu Pathak, a Brahmin of the Parashar gotra, who belonged to narayanpur village of Gonda district. They had a son named Tarak who died as a toddler. Once when Tulsidas had gone to a Hanuman temple, Ratnavali went to her father's home with her brother. When Tulsidas learned of this, he swam across the Sarju river in the night to meet his wife. Ratnavali chided Tulsidas for this, and remarked that if Tulsidas was even half as devoted to God as he was to her body of flesh and blood, he would have been redeemed. Tulsidas left her instantly and left for the holy city of Prayag. Here, he renounced the grihastha (householder's life) stage and became a sadhu (ascetic).

Some authors consider the marriage episode of Tulsidas to be a later interpolation and maintain among that he was celibate. These include Rambhadracharya, who cite two verses in the Vinayapatrika and Hanuman Bahuka that Tulsidas never married and was a sadhu from childhood.