Talk:Nābhādāsa

By Swami Harshananda

Nābhādāsa (a. d. 1657-1700)

Great saints have been the ‘salt of the earth’ in India. Narration of their lives has been considered as an act of great religious merit.

It goes to the credit of Nābhādāsa that he has preserved for the posterity, the detailed lives of about two hundred minstrels of God, in his now well-known book Bhaktamālā or Bhaktamālikā.

Born perhaps in A. D. 1657 at the village Rāma-bhadrācala, on the bank of the river Godāvarī (in Andhra Pradesh) to Rāmadāsa, himself a great devotee of Rāma, he lost his father at an early age and was abandoned by his mother due to extreme poverty. The child was adopted by one Agradāsa, by name, belonging to Galatā near Jaipur (in Rajasthan). Agradāsa too seems to have been a saint and is said to have initiated the child into the cult of devotion to Rāma, with the new name ‘Nābhādāsa,’ the original name being Nārāyaṇadāsa.

Nābhādāsa was well-educated and endowed with great poetical talents. He was also a humble devotee of God.

His work Bhaktamālā is written in Hindi (Brajbhāṣā) poetry in the metre called ‘Chappa’ (with six lines). The language is elegant though full of Sanskrit words.

There are many commentaries on this

work as also several other Bhaktamālās

by other writers, who have kept this work as their model.

References

• The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore