THE MEDIEVAL SAINTS OF INDIA JASHBHAI PATEL For Private Circulation Only: Not for Sale Books by the Author • Satyendranath Bose—An Indian Physicist • Lectures on Gauge Field Theory • Garhwal Kumaon Himalayas • Shruti and Swar—The Basis of Indian Music • India and Scientific Temper • Shruti and Swar—Letters to a Student • Myth Exploded—The Unscientific ways of Big Dams and Narmada Project • Story of a Small Rivulet Arvari From Death to Rebirth • Meghnad Saha—An Indian Astrophysicist • Lines and Stray Jottings • The Medieval Musicians of India • The Medieval Philosophers of India • The Lost River Sarasvati of India • The Prehistoric India • The Medieval Saints of India All Rights Reserved Copyright @ 2009 Jashbhai Patel Published by Jashbhai Patel A/6, Dodsal Employees C. H. S. Ltd Akota, Vadodara, 390020 Printed by Library of Cataloguing in Publication Data Patel Jashbhai, 1928 The Medieval Saints of India Private Publication 1. Biography 2.Religion 3.History 2 This book is dedicated To All the Saints of India Whose names I have mentioned Or Not mentioned in this book. LkUr ije fgrdkjh] txr ek¡gh AA /kzq AA izHkqikn izxV djkor izhfr] Hkje feVkor Hkkjh AA 1 AA ije d`ikyq ldy thou ij] gfj le lc nq[kgkjh AA 2 AA f=xq.kkrhr fQjr ru R;kxh] jhr txr ls U;kjh AA 3 AA czgkuan laru dh lkscr] feyr gS izdV eqjkjh AA 4 AA 3 CONTENTS Preface 5 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Dharma 18 Chapter 1 – Assam 29 – 39 • Shankardev 29 • Madhavdev 37 Chapter 2 – West Bengal 40 – 47 • Jaidev 40 • Chandidas 41 • Chaitanya Mahaprabhu 42 Chapter 3 – Orissa 48 – 50 • Jagannath Das 48 Chapter 4 – Bihar 51 – 52 • Vidyapati 51 Chapter 5 – Uttar Pradesh 53 – 68 • Ramanand 53 • Ravidas 54 • Kabirdas 56 • Surdas 58 • Tulsidas 60 Chapter 6 – Punjab 69 – 78 • Nanakdev 69 Chapter 7 – Jamma & Kashmir 79 – 80 • Lalleshwari 79 Chapter 8 – Rajasthan 81 – 94 • Mirabai 81 • Dadu Dayal 92 Chapter 9 – Gujarat 95 – 97 • Narsi Mehta 95 Chapter 10 – Maharashtra 98 – 117 • Namdev 98 • Jnandev 101 • Aknath 108 • Tukaram 111 • Ramdas 115 Chapter 11 – Karnataka 118 – 124 • Basava 118 • Akka Mahadevi 119 • Kanakdas 121 Chapter 12 – Andhra Pradesh 125 – 127 • Pothana 125 Chapter 13 – Kerala 128 – 130 • Ezhuttacchan 128 4 PREFACE This book, The Medieval Saints of India , narrates the life and works of Indian saints. This is not an encyclopedia of Indian saints. The saints whom I have chosen here have played very important role in educating the Indian masses in Indian Dharma and its culture. I came to formulate this book in my mind when I was writing my book, The Medieval Philosophers of India . I came to realize then that the works of these Acharyas reached among the Indian masses through the life and works of the saints I have chosen here. This is then the genesis of the present book. Now I give the outline of this book. The book begins with the title, Introduction. It tells how the Bhakti Movement began in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. The next title is Dharma. In it, I have briefly stated the ideas of Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo on Indian Dharma. After having introduced the Indian Dharma, I have taken the life and works of Indian saints. Chapter 1 begins with a map of Assam and it contains the narration of life and works of Assamese saints who gave them their Dharma and culture. Chapter 2 begins with a map of West Bengal and it contains the narration of the Bengali saints. In this manner, we reach right up to the Indian State of Kerala. The saints’ biographes, which are available to us, are full of legends. I have separated out the legends in my text because some might believe or not believe in them. For instance, Vinoba Bhave does not believe that Jnandev and his brothers and sister flew to Chang Dev on a rock on which they were sitting. He believed in some other legends. I have kept some legends for completeness of my work. The readers might wonder what relevance these saints have today in modern India. These biographies suggest that if India wants to keep her Dharma alive, then she wound need to produce saints throughout her existence because the Indian Dharma is not an organised religion. It is a living thing, which is exemplified by her saints and these saints would need to know not only the Indian Dharma but also the modern existing knowledge in all the important branches of learning. Only then, they would have impact on the world. The readers might find that some of the biographies are very short and the others are very long. In this matter I had no choice. Biographies of many saints are not available to me at all. One case that I would like to point out is that of Saint Anandghan of Madhya Pradesh. He was a Jain saint who lived in the forest of Mount Abu in Rajasthan. He wrote extensively. His devotional songs are sung even to this date among the Vaishnavas of Pusti Marg. His poems on Jain thirthankars are recited by Jains. Yet, I could not find enough information about him. For this reason the map of Madhya Pradesh does not find a place in this book. From the preceding narration we should admit that we know very little about some saints. Naturally then, some biographies are bound to be short. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was typeset on eight computers in Microsoft Word. The computers belonged to my friends: Sharad Shah, Janak Chauhan, Renu, Chinu, Trupti, and Rohit and to friends in Shishu Milap. Krishnakant helped me in formatting the text, in adjusting the maps in the text and in many other ways. Thanks are due to all these friends. I thank them sincerely here for the help they have given to me. My friend Chinu carefully read the text and I very much appreciate his help and the word thanks is not enough for the troublesome task he undertook. The cost for the publication of this book will be borne by my elder sister, Savita. 5 INTRODUCTION The present book The Medieval Saints of India is a sequel to my earlier book The Medieval Philosophers of India . This sequel complements the previous work. Normally, philosophy is considered an academic subject. But in India, philosophy percolated through the writings of many Indian saints to the masses. It is my endeavor to present here the life and works of these saints and to show how they educated the poor toiling masses. The writings of these saints are not in one single language. They lived in various parts of India and wrote works in their respective regional language. Hence, it is extremely difficult for a person like me to convey the beauty of these works because I am not a linguist. In 1950, the Constitution of India has given official status to some 15 languages including English. Among these, 12 are regional languages of India. These are: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. The works of Indian saints are in these languages. Of these 12 languages, I can read and understand four, namely, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati. This means that I have relied on others for information of many of these works. I have acknowledged this fact at appropriate places in my write up. Here, I single out Vinoba Bhave and express my gratitude to him. I referred to Vinoba Sahitya, Vols. 9, 10, and 11 and these helped me much. These are in Hindi. I read the works of many authors to collect material for my book. Among them too, I found Vinoba Bhave to be unique. Here was a man, who liked medieval saints walked all over India and participated in the prayer meetings of the local people and gathered first hand the knowledge of their scriptural books. In this respect, he equaled those saints who traveled all over India as pilgrims for 10 to 20 years. Vinoba Bhave too walked for 13 years with his followers during the Bhoodan movement. I am not blind not to see the difference between a pilgrimage and the walk of Vinoba for the social uplift of the people. Even then, it is true that his heart was in learning regional scriptures with help of local scholars and discusses the spiritual content of each text. In this he was very close to medieval saints. The question then arises: Was Vinoba a saint? This question is difficult for me to answer. I have not seen him even from a distance. His followers have not written a significant biography of the master. Anyway, to write any biography is very difficult. When a biography fails to bring out the true personality of the person then it degenerates into a hagiography. What we have then is his bio data from his followers. They fail to take into account the criticism of his critics. Vinoba’s critics are very eminent men. Acharya Kirpalani, a Gandhian and one of the Presidents of the Indian National Congress called him a “Sarkari Sadhu” (Government-sponsored saint). Another Gandhian, Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) showed ‘great disgust’ when Vinoba Bhave made a ‘mere comment’ like ‘I leave it to God for verdict’. Since then many other have criticized him calling him a pious puritan, a self-righteous man devoid of humor and so on. These are indeed dark words that portray Vinoba as a conceited man and not worthy to be a saint. His critics tell us that Vinoba Bhave was fond of impressing ordinary persons with his vast learning.