Ravidas
The details of Guru Ravidas 's life are controversial. According to some he was born in 1376/7 or else 1399. According to history he was born in a village named Seer Govardhanpur, near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, India. His father Baba Santokh Das was a Chamar leather merchant and Mata Kalsa Devi was his mother. His father got him married to Mata Lona Devi at early age and they had a son named Vijaydas. Saint Ravidas was the disciple of the famous Swami Ramanand of Varanasi. He was a close friend of saint Kabir and was also the spiritual guide or ‘Guru’ to famous saint Mira Bai.
Ravidas was a prominent figure in the bhakti movement and a renowned poet of the nirguna bhakti tradition that valued the worship of a formless God. Belonging as he did to one of the lowest castes of Hindu society, the Chamar or tanner, the spiritual status he attained was profoundly troubling for orthodox Hindus of his time. His ancestral profession was the making and mending of shoes. Members of the Chamar caste were considered physically and ritually impure on account of their occupational contact with carcasses, and were deemed to be ‘untouchables’ in medieval Hindu society which operated according to normative values determined according to one 's place in the caste hierarchy. The reading of Sanskrit scriptures was prohibited to lower castes, and direct access to the deities of the upper castes was restricted. In such an environment, Ravidas chose to defy the priestly caste, and to worship a formless God who could be envisioned without the mediation of human intermediaries i.e. the Brahmins. The main motto of his poetry serves to uphold the equality of all mankind saying that a man’s action rather than his birth credentials determines his moral nobility.
Ravidass ' teachings represent an offshoot of the bhakti movement of the fifteenth century, a religious renaissance in India. The main tenets of Ravidas’s teachings state that there is only one God who is omnipresent and omnipotent,
Ravidas was a prominent figure in the bhakti movement and a renowned poet of the nirguna bhakti tradition that valued the worship of a formless God. Belonging as he did to one of the lowest castes of Hindu society, the Chamar or tanner, the spiritual status he attained was profoundly troubling for orthodox Hindus of his time. His ancestral profession was the making and mending of shoes. Members of the Chamar caste were considered physically and ritually impure on account of their occupational contact with carcasses, and were deemed to be ‘untouchables’ in medieval Hindu society which operated according to normative values determined according to one 's place in the caste hierarchy. The reading of Sanskrit scriptures was prohibited to lower castes, and direct access to the deities of the upper castes was restricted. In such an environment, Ravidas chose to defy the priestly caste, and to worship a formless God who could be envisioned without the mediation of human intermediaries i.e. the Brahmins. The main motto of his poetry serves to uphold the equality of all mankind saying that a man’s action rather than his birth credentials determines his moral nobility.
Ravidass ' teachings represent an offshoot of the bhakti movement of the fifteenth century, a religious renaissance in India. The main tenets of Ravidas’s teachings state that there is only one God who is omnipresent and omnipotent,
Bibliography: 1.Callewart W.M., and P.G. Friedlander. "The Teachings of Bhagat Raidas."Http://www.sikhreview.org. N.p., 11 Sept. 2005. Web. 16 June 2012. 2. "Samba Sadashiva." The Poet Saints of India. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 June 2012. . 3. Chauhan, G. S. Bani of Bhagats: Lives and Selected Works of Saints Included in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. New Delhi: Hemkunt, 2006. Print. 4. Upadhyaya, K. N. Guru Ravidas, Life and Teachings. Dera Baba Jaimal Singh, Punjab, India: Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 1982. Print.