Bhagat Sain Jiਭਗਤ ਸੈਣ ਜੀ

Bhagat Sain Ji was a barber and saint poet of the Bhakti movement who lived at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth. He served, by the main tradition, at the court of Raja Ram of Rewa, and one of his hymns, in Raag Dhanasari, is preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

Who was Bhagat Sain Ji?

He was one of the fifteen Bhagats, the devotional saints from different regions, faiths and trades whose hymns Guru Arjan Dev Ji placed alongside the Gurus' own bani when he compiled the Sikh scripture in 1604. Guru Arjan Dev Ji himself tells us how Sain was remembered: in a hymn in the Granth, on Ang 487 to 488, he says that Sain the barber, who did humble work, became known in every house, because the Supreme Lord dwelt in his heart and he came to be counted among the devotees. Bhagat Ravidas Ji makes the same point from the other side: in his hymn on Ang 1106 he names Namdev, Kabir, Trilochan, Sadhna and Sain together as devotees who, by the grace of God, crossed over. A court barber stands in that company with no apology for his trade, and that is the first thing his life teaches.

A barber at a royal court: Rewa or Bidar?

All accounts agree that Sain was a barber, a nai, by birth and by occupation. Beyond that, the traditions divide, and an honest page has to say so. The main tradition, given by the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism and by the scholar Max Arthur Macauliffe, makes him the barber of Raja Ram, king of Rewa, then called Bandhavgarh, in central India, in what is now Madhya Pradesh. A second tradition attaches him instead to the court of the ruler of Bidar, in the south, in what is now Karnataka, and holds that he was a disciple of the saint Jnanadeva. The Encyclopaedia records both and does not pretend the record settles the matter. The work itself, in either telling, was the close personal service of a court barber of that age: shaving and grooming the king, attending on his person, and entertaining the court, a humble daily round carried out in the palace itself.

His dates are just as unsettled. Because tradition counts him among the disciples of Ramananda, writers place him at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, and that is as firm as the evidence allows. Later accounts offer exact years that do not agree: one scholar cited in the Encyclopaedia gives 1390 to 1440, while a Punjab tradition gives a birth in 1343 at Sohal Thatthi, in what is now Tarn Taran district, with parents named Mukand Rai and Jivani. Wikipedia marks that 1343 year as disputed. This page therefore gives no single birth year, birthplace or death date as fact: Sain flourished around the turn of the fifteenth century, and the rest belongs to the competing traditions.

How did he become a disciple of Ramananda?

The Bhakti teacher Ramananda stands at the centre of Sain's story, as he does for several of the Bhagats. The Bhaktamal tradition counts Sain among Ramananda's twelve best known disciples, alongside figures such as Bhagat Kabir Ji, Ravidas Ji and Bhagat Dhanna Ji. Bhai Gurdas Ji, the Sikh scribe and interpreter of the early seventeenth century, adds the human detail in his Vars (Vaar 10, Pauri 16): hearing of the glory of Kabir, Sain the barber also turned to Ramananda and took him as his preceptor. In the midst of his court duties, Macauliffe writes, Sain found time to study Ramananda's hymns, shape his life on the principles in them, and catch their devotional fervour. Whether every named disciple of Ramananda really lived at the same time is a question scholars have raised for others in that circle too, so the discipleship is best held as the strong and consistent tradition it is, rather than as a dated record.

What do the traditional stories say about his service to saints?

The story everyone tells about Sain is a sakhi, a traditional account, and it is told here as tradition, not as documented history. Bhai Gurdas Ji gives its outline, and the Bhagat Mal, the early collection of the lives of the Bhagats, tells it in full. Sain spent his nights in loving devotion and went to the king's court in the morning. One night, holy guests came to his house and the singing of hymns and the company of the saints went on all night. Sain could not bring himself to leave them, and so he failed to appear for his morning duty to Raja Ram. He believed, the chronicler says, that serving saints was the same as serving God himself, and he had always performed every humble service for such guests gladly.

The sakhi then says that God, to protect the honour of his devotee, took Sain's own form, went to the palace and performed the barber's duties so well that the king was delighted. When Sain came at last to the court, full of shame and ready to apologise, the king called him close, honoured him, and said that his service that day had won his heart. In Macauliffe's telling the king then fell at Sain's feet and took him as his guru. A later version stretches the absence to three days, with the same ending. Read as the tradition intends, the point is not the wonder itself. It is the order Sain chose, guests and God before the palace, and the belief that God does not let such service go unhonoured.

How many hymns of Bhagat Sain Ji are in Guru Granth Sahib Ji?

One hymn of Bhagat Sain Ji is in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, in Raag Dhanasari, on Ang 695. All three of the main sources for his life, the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Wikipedia and SikhiWiki, agree on the count, the raag and the page, so this, unlike his dates, is firm ground. Guru Arjan Dev Ji praised him more than once inside the scripture he compiled: besides the words on Ang 487 to 488 already quoted, the Encyclopaedia notes his references on Ang 1192, that Sain the barber was saved through his selfless service, and on Ang 1207, where Kabir is called good and the humble barber Sain is called sublime. Dhanna Ji, in his own hymn, also names Sain among the working devotees, the printer, the weaver, the cobbler and the barber, whose example drew him to God. Sain's single hymn therefore sits inside a web of respect: the compiler honoured the man as well as the verse, and his fellow Bhagats counted him among the saved.

What does his hymn teach, and what is his legacy?

His one hymn is an aarti, a song of lamp lit worship, and it quietly rebuilds that worship from the inside. It opens with the familiar offerings, incense, lamps and clarified butter, and with the words I am a sacrifice to you. Then it turns: sublime is the lamp and pure is the wick, he sings, and you yourself are that immaculate light. The Encyclopaedia sums up his teaching this way: for Sain, singing God's praise and meditating on His Name are the highest worship, and these alone carry a person across the fearful ocean of existence to liberation. The hymn names his teacher with gratitude, Ramananda knows the devotional worship of the Lord, and it closes with his own instruction, says Sain, remember the Lord, the embodiment of supreme joy. His bani is short enough to read in a minute and dense enough to stay with a reader for years.

Sain's legacy is the place he holds among the fifteen Bhagats, alongside Baba Farid Ji, Bhagat Namdev Ji and Dhanna Ji, and the use later generations have made of his story. Bhai Gurdas Ji retold his sakhi within two centuries, Sikh tradition has kept his hymn alive through the aarti, and in Punjab his memory is kept at places linked to the Sohal tradition. For barbers and for everyone who does humble, daily work for others, his page makes a plain claim: the trade a person is born to does not set the ceiling on their devotion, and service for guests and saints is itself worship.