Ravidas (ca. 1500) is a sant or poet-saint who lived in Benares and is said to have been a
younger contemporary of poet-saint Kabir, according to tradition.
The Sants were a loose group of poet-saints from central and
northern India who shared a number of common characteristics, including a focus
on individualized, interior religion leading to a personal experience of the
divine, a dislike for external ritual, particularly image worship, faith in the
power of the divine Name, and a tendency to disregard traditional caste
distinctions.
Ravidas is described as a leather worker (chamar) by both
tradition and allusions in his poems, a social group whose interaction with dead
animals and their skins left them untouchable.
His hereditary occupation is said to have sustained him, and
much of his poetry deals with concerns of worldly birth and standing.
He never questioned the significance of heredity, but he
finally believed that his dedication to God had enabled him to transcend his
birth and given him prestige based on other factors.
His poetry, as well as his repeated reminders to his
audience that life is brief and difficult, and that they should pay close
attention to religious practice, reflect this strong personal conviction.
Ravidas was probably definitely uneducated, given his poor
social rank.
His poetic songs were most likely passed down orally, but
his personal appeal made him one of the most well-known sant poets.
The Adigranth, a scripture for the Sikh community, and the
Panchvani collections, produced by the Dadupanth, are the two earliest recorded
sources of his work.
Ravidas has also acted as a role model for the poor in
contemporary India; his followers are known as Ravidasis.
Songs of the Saints of India, edited by John Stratton Hawley
and Mark Juergensmeyer, was published in 1988, and The Life and Works of
Raidas, translated by Winand M.
Callewaert and Peter Freidlander, was published in 1992.
You may also want to read more about Hinduism here.
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