Ravidas: Varanasi, c. 1450–1520
Let’s transport ourselves to Varanasi, one of India’s religious epicenters (also known as Benares and Kashi), on the banks of River Ganga in Uttar Pradesh. Here, in the 15th or 16th century in the southern village of Sri Govardhanpur, lived a devoted leather worker (chamar) called Ravidas. He composed powerful, soulful devotional hymns in Hindi, earning a noteworthy place in the family of North Indian bhakti poets. Ravidas mentions poet-saints Namdev, Trilochan and Kabir in his compositions, indicating deep solidarity with them.
One of the distinguishing features of the devotional works often highlighted from this period was their voice-giving to the lower classes. Ravidas, sometimes known as Raidas, often sang of his status as a shoemaker, demonstrating that such livelihoods are in no way a barrier to reaching God. In fact, his trade offered a unique vantage point for him to transcend social distinctions through bhakti. He exclaims in one of his couplets, “O, well-born of Benares, I too am born well known: my labor is with leather. But my heart can boast the Lord” (translated by John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer).
Like poet-saint Kabir, also from Varanasi and famous for his nirguna bhakti, Ravidas often sang about devotion to the formless Divine and is thought by many to be a disciple of Saint Ramananda. Nirguna literally means without qualities, making nirguna bhakti seem like an oxymoron. How can one feel love towards something without qualities or personality traits? Herein lies the genius of Ravidas. Unlike Mirabai or Surdas, who gained spiritual fulfillment by loving and surrendering to God in a specific form, Ravidas ardently communicated his love for Divinity without form. Ravidas uses Ram as a synonym for God or Truth, and as a goal that one should meditate on and strive towards.
Ravidas as Mirabai’s Guru
In the late 17th century, Anantadas dedicated an entire section of his hagiographies to Sant Ravidas, called the Raidas Parchai. Here we read of several miraculous incidents demonstrating the purity of Ravidas’s devotion. Moreover, we find stories about Ravidas’s meeting with the Rajput queen Jhali of Chittor, who is presumably Mirabai, the iconic poet-saint from Rajasthan (as per Ravidas Ramayana). Anantadas describes Queen Jhali’s search for a guru and how she went to Ravidas in Varanasi for spiritual guidance. He writes that the queen bowed down and touched her forehead to his feet. Subsequently she received initiation from him. There is mention of Brahmins objecting vehemently to the initiation, but they did not prevent it. Queen Jhali then returned to her royal palace, after donating money to Ravidas’s temple, which the saint used to feed the poor. There is also mention of Queen Jhali’s sending a letter to Ravidas, requesting him to visit Chittor. After gaining permission from “his big brother” Kabir, Ravidas leaves for the city. This episode in Anantadas’s hagiography is a prime reason for the popular belief that Ravidas was Mirabai’s guru.
Ravidas in the Dadu Panth
Several of Ravidas’s poems are embedded in the scriptures of the Dadu Panth, a sect headquartered in Rajasthan. Dadu’s followers revere Ravidas as one of the four great bhaktas, following his teachings alongside those of their guru, Dadu Dayal. Legend has it that Ravidas met Nanak, the founder and first guru of the Sikh tradition, at the Guru Bagh (Gurus’ Garden) in Varanasi. Philosophically, Ravidas, Dadu Dayal and Guru Nanak share a spiritual affinity to poet-saint Kabir (c. 1398-1448) and his teachings. All three considered themselves to be in Kabir’s lineage. The poems of all four of these saints carry common themes, such as challenging caste distinctions and the authority of organized religion. Inspired by the ascetic teachings of the Nath Yogis, each spurned external forms of worship and encouraged turning inward to seek God and wholeheartedly loving God. Over time, Ravidas’s charismatic hymns gained so much momentum that they were included in various Hindu and Sikh scriptures. Indeed, much of his poetry was adopted into the Sikh scriptural anthology Adi Granth
Ravidas’s Poems from the Adi Granth
translated by john stratton hawley & mark juergensmeyer
A family that has a true follower of the Lord
Is neither high caste nor low caste, lordly or poor.
The world will know it by its fragrance.
Priests or merchants, laborers or warriors, halfbreeds,
outcasts, and those who tend cremation fires—
their hearts are all the same.
He who becomes pure through love of the Lord
exalts himself and his family as well.
Thanks be to his village, thanks to his home,
thanks to that pure family, each and every one,
For he’s drunk with the essence of the liquid of life
and he pours away all the poisons.
No one equals someone so pure and devoted—
not priests, not heroes, not parasoled kings.
As the lotus leaf floats above the water, Ravidas says,
so he flowers above the world of his birth.
χ χ χ
The day it comes, it goes;
whatever you do, nothing stays firm.
The group goes, and I go;
the going is long, and death is overhead.
What! Are you sleeping? Wake up, fool,
wake to the world you took to be true.
The one who gave you life daily feeds you, clothes you;
inside every body, he runs the store.
So keep to your prayers, abandon “me” and “mine,”
now’s the time to nurture the name that’s in the heart.
Life has slipped away. No one’s left on the road,
and in each direction, the evening dark has come.
Madman, says Ravidas, here’s the cause of it all—
it’s only a house of tricks. Ignore the world