Ravidas or Raidas (1267–1335) was an Indian mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement during the 15th to 16th century CE. Venerated as a guru (spiritual teacher) in the modern regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Haryana, he was a poet, social reformer and spiritual figure.
The life details of Ravidas are uncertain and contested. Some scholars believe he was born in 1433 CE. He taught removal of social divisions of caste and gender, and promoted unity in the pursuit of personal spiritual freedom.
Ravidas’s devotional verses were included in the Sikh scriptures known as Guru Granth Sahib. The Panch Vani text of the Dadu Panthi tradition within Hinduism also includes numerous poems of Ravidas. He is also the central figure within the Ravidassia religious movement.
Dates
The details of Ravidas’s life are not well known. Some scholars state he was born in 1377 CE and died in 1528 CE in Banaras at the age of 151 years. Others, such as Amaresh Datta, claim he was born in 1267 and died in 1335.
Life
Ravidas was born in the village of Sir Gobardhanpur, near Varanasi in what is now Uttar Pradesh, India. His birthplace is now known as Shri Guru Ravidass Janam Asthan. His birthday is celebrated as Ravidas Jayanti and important temple is Ravidas Temple. Mata Kalsi was his mother, and his father was Santokh Dass. His parents belonged to a leather-working Chamar community, an untouchable caste. While his original occupation was leather work, he began to spend most of his time in spiritual pursuits at the banks of the Ganges. Thereafter he spent most of his life in the company of Sufi saints, sadhus and ascetics. At the age of 12, Ravidas was married off to Lona Devi. They had a son, Vijay Dass.
The text Anantadas Parcai is one of the earliest surviving biographies of various Bhakti movement poets which describes the birth of Ravidas.
Medieval era texts, such as the Bhaktamal suggest that Ravidas was the disciple of the Brahmin bhakti-poet Ramananda. He is traditionally considered as Kabir‘s younger contemporary.
However, the medieval text Ratnavali says Ravidas gained his spiritual knowledge from Ramananda and was a follower of the Ramanandi Sampradaya tradition.
His ideas and fame grew over his lifetime, and texts suggest Brahmins used to bow before him. He travelled 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 focused on the nirguna (without attributes, abstract) form of supreme beings. As his poetic hymns in regional languages inspired others, people from various background sought his teachings and guidance.
Most scholars believe that Ravidas met Guru Nanak, 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 source 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, the Premambodha. This text, composed over 170 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 sants 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, ridicules of nirguni and saguni ideas, and such text corruption: Callewaert considers the 1676 version as the standard version, his critical edition of Ravidas’s hagiography excludes all these insertions, and he remarks that the cleaner critical version of Anantadas’s parcais suggests that there is more in common in the ideas of bhakti movement’s Ravidas, Kabir and Sen than previously thought.
Khare similarly has questioned the textual sources on Ravidas, and mentions there are few “readily available and reliable textual sources on the Hindu and Untouchable treatment of Ravidas.
