Vaishnava teacher of Varanasi; one hymn in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji
Bhagat Ramanand
A Vaishnava teacher based at Varanasi who founded the Ramavat or Ramanandi order and taught devotion to Rama. Later tradition names many famous devotees of humble trades as his disciples, though his dates make some of those links hard to accept. One hymn of his is in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, in Raag Basant at ang 1195.
Life and following
The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he was born at Prayag and studied at Varanasi, where he became a disciple of Raghavanand, fourth in the teaching line from Ramanuja. He parted from his teacher to found his own order. It was more open on questions of caste, and its followers, the Bairagis, carried the worship of Rama widely, mainly in the central Ganges plain. Panchganga Ghat at Varanasi is still linked with his name.
Macauliffe says that very little is known of his life, that the writings about him are mostly praise, and that the order keeps its founder's history private.[EoS][Macauliffe]
In Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji
BaniDB gives his one hymn in Raag Basant at ang 1195. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says that it rejects image worship, sees God as present everywhere, and teaches that God is known through the word of the true Guru and not through the Vedas or Puranas. A version of the same hymn appears in the Sarbangi compiled by Rajjab.
Modern scholars, according to the Encyclopaedia, accept only two of the many works credited to him as authentic, and the hymn shows how close he stood to the tradition of devotion to the formless God.[DB][EoS]
What the sources disagree on
- Dates
The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's entries give 1300 to 1410, 1300 to 1411 and 1299 to 1410. Macauliffe, reasoning from his place in the teaching line and from Bhagat Kabir's traditional birth year of 1398, puts him later, from the late fourteenth century into the first half of the fifteenth.[EoS][EoS][EoS][Macauliffe]
- His disciples
Macauliffe accepts Bhagat Kabir as his disciple, and Bhai Gurdas names Bhagat Sain. The Encyclopaedia's entry on Ramanand calls the tradition chronologically impossible for Bhagat Kabir, Bhagat Ravidas, Bhagat Sain and Bhagat Dhanna, and suggests that his open views on caste gave rise to it.[Macauliffe][EoS][EoS]