Musician and lifelong companion of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji
Bhai Mardana
A Muslim musician of the Mirasi caste from Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji's own village, ten years his elder, who played the rabab while Guru Ji sang and walked with him through two decades of travel. The pairing of a Hindu-born teacher and a Muslim accompanist is the first image of what the new community was.
Life
Mardana was born in 1459 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi into a family of hereditary Muslim musicians and genealogists. He was a friend of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji's from youth, and when Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji went to Sultanpur Lodhi Mardana joined him there. In the evening gatherings at Sultanpur he provided the music, and when Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji set out on his travels around 1500 Mardana went with him and stayed with him on all the long journeys.
In the Janamsakhis he is the foil: hungry, tired, curious, asking the questions that give Guru Ji occasion to teach, and sometimes getting into scrapes that Guru Ji resolves. Behind the comic figure is the serious fact that Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji's teaching was sung, and that it was a Muslim who played for it.
Three saloks in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji carry his name in the heading, in the Var of Bihagra, though whether they are his compositions or Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji's addressed to him is debated. His descendants, the rababis, kept up the music of the Harmandir until 1947.[EoS][EoS]
What the sources disagree on
- Place of death
Traditions place his death either at Kartarpur or at Khurram in Afghanistan on the return from the western journey; the Encyclopaedia records both.[EoS]
Images
A later imagining of Bhai Mardana with his rabab, probably from the 19th or early 20th century. The source is thin, so the date is uncertain.
Unknown, Probably 19th or early 20th century. Public domain. Source
A later artist's imagining of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji with Bhai Mardana and his rabab, dated on Commons to about 1740. The source is a social media post, so treat the date with caution.
Unknown, c. 1740, weakly sourced. Bhai Suchet Singh Collection, Bhai Rupa (as credited on Commons). Public domain. Source
A later artist's imagining of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji and Bhai Mardana meeting Bhagat Kabir, from the Punjab Hills in the late 1700s. Whether such a meeting took place is not established.
Unknown, Late 18th century. Public domain. Source
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