Guru Ravidas

Guru Ravidas

The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind has greeted fellow-citizens on the eve of the birthday of Guru Ravidas

About Guru Ravidas

• Ravidas was an Indian mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement during the 15th to 16th century CE. Venerated as a guru (teacher) in the region of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, the devotional songs of Ravidas have had a lasting impact upon the bhakti movement. He was a poet-saint, social reformer, and a spiritual figure.
• The life details of Ravidas are uncertain and contested. Scholars believe he was born in 1371 CE, in a family that worked with dead animals' skins to produce leather products. If tradition and medieval era texts are to be believed then Ravidas was one of the disciples of the bhakti saint-poet Ramananda and a contemporary of the bhakti saint-poet Kabir.
• Ravidas' devotional songs were included in the Sikh scriptures, Guru Granth Sahib. The Panch Vani text of the Dadupanthi tradition within Hinduism also includes numerous poems of Ravidas. Ravidas taught the removal of social divisions of caste and gender and promoted unity in the pursuit of personal spiritual freedoms.

Life

• Medieval era texts, such as the Bhaktamal suggest that Ravidas was not the disciple of the Brahmin bhakti -poet Ramananda. He is traditionally considered as Kabir's younger contemporary.
• His ideas and fame grew over his lifetime, and texts suggest Brahmins (members of priestly upper caste) used to bow before him. He traveled extensively, visiting Hindu pilgrimage sites in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and those in the Himalayas. He abandoned saguna (with attributes, image) forms of supreme beings, and focussed on the nirguna (without attributes, abstract) form of supreme beings. As his poetic hymns in regional languages inspired others, people from various backgrounds sought his teachings and guidance.
• Most scholars believe that Ravidas met Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism. He is revered in the Sikh scripture, and 41 of Ravidas' poems are included in the Adi Granth. These poems are one of the oldest attested sources of his ideas and literary works. Another substantial source of legends and stories about the life of Ravidas is the hagiography in the Sikh tradition, named Premambodha. This text, composed over 150 years after Ravidas' death, in 1693, includes him as one of the seventeen saints of Indian religious tradition. The 17th-century Nabhadas's Bhaktamal, and the Parcais of Anantadas, both contain chapters on Ravidas. Other than these, the scriptures and texts of Sikh tradition and the Hindu Dadupanthi traditions, most other written sources about the life of Ravidas, including by the Ravidasi (followers of Ravidas), were composed in the early 20th century, or about 400 years after his death.
• This text, called the Parcaīs (or Parchais), included Ravidas among the saints whose biography and poems were included. Over time new manuscripts of Parcais of Anantadas were reproduced, some in different local languages of India. Winnand Callewaert notes that some 30 manuscripts of Anantadas's hagiography on Ravidas have been found in different parts of India. Of these four manuscripts are complete, collated and have been dated to 1662, 1665, 1676 and 1687. The first three are close with some morphological variants without affecting the meaning, but the 1687 version systematically inserts verses into the text, at various locations, with caste-related statements, new claims of Brahmins persecuting Ravidas, notes on the untouchability of Ravidas, claims of Kabir giving Ravidas ideas, ridicule of nirguni and saguni ideas.

Source: PIB, Wikipedia