Bhagat Sain Ji

Bhagat Sain Ji was a barber in the service of the raja of Bandhavgarh. One hymn of his is in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, in Dhanasri.

The account is that he was detained by his devotions and failed to attend the raja, and that his place was taken and his absence never noticed. It is a story about service being answered rather than about miracle.

He is named by Guru Arjan Dev Ji in the same list as Dhanna, Namdev, Kabir and Ravidas. A barber, a leatherworker, a weaver, a calico printer and a farmer, named in scripture as those who reached what Brahmins had claimed as their own preserve.

The Sain community in Punjab, traditionally barbers, takes its name from him.

The single hymn is in Dhanasri and is a straightforward statement of devotion with the poet's name at the end. It carries no biography and nothing that fixes a place.

The account of the raja and the missed attendance comes from the later hagiographies and is the sort of story attached to most of the Bhagats. Its point is that the practice was accepted from a barber on the same terms as from anyone else.

Bandhavgarh is in Madhya Pradesh and is known now as a tiger reserve. No shrine there is connected with him. The Sain community in Punjab keeps his name and observes his anniversary, and the observance is local with no central institution behind it.

What we don't know

  • His dates and any detail of his life outside the tradition.

Where to check this

  1. Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Dhanasri. Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (searchable text and translations) ↗

This page has not yet been read through by the editor. Treat it with more caution than the rest.

How this page was written. The text is compiled from the standard published histories and reference works, not from a document held in hand. Nobody from this project has visited the place or read the archive. The list above is where a reader can go to check it, not a record of what was consulted line by line. Dates and figures are the received account. If you hold something better, write in and it will be corrected.

This is one of 65 accounts in Before the Gurus, the chapter of this site covering the region before 1469, from the Indus cities to the Lodhis.