Shan Ali Shah

18110023
SS 137
Blog post # 4

Surdas, the 15th-century sightless saint, poet, and musician, is known for his devotional songs
dedicated to Krishna and his vital contributions in the Bhakti movement. He is said to have
written and composed a hundred thousand songs in his best work, the 'Sur Sagar' (Ocean of
Melody), out of which only about 8,000 are extant. His immense contributions are still
remembered today. He is considered a saint and also known as Sant Surdas, a name which
literally means the "slave of melody".
Surdas hailed from a poor, Brahmin family where he suffered much neglect and discrimination
because of the total absence of empathy for his blindness. The boy was not even given a chance
at literacy and so, naturally, turned to his local dialect when it came to his creative endeavors. It
was his many disciples and followers who recorded his songs of Krishna that he recited with
such startling vividness that he seemed to giving first-hand accounts. Through his poetry, Brij
Bhasha, a dialect of Hindi, attained the status of a literary language. Surdas was profoundly
influenced by the Bhakti movement - a religious movement which focused on deep devotion, or
'bhakti', for a specific Hindu deity, such as Krishna, Vishnu or Shiva that was prevalent in Indian
between c800-1700 AD. It was a grassroots spiritual movement that brought empowerment to
the masses. It upheld a path to salvation through a personal relationship of love, devotion and
surrender to, usually, a particular deity. Work of Surdas that belong to the Bhakti tradition,
include the ‘Sur Sagar’, the ‘Sur-Saravali’ and the ‘Sahitya-Lahiri’. Surdas has been described
‘the sun in the sky of Hindi literature’. Surdas, an ardent devottee of Krishna, achieved great
heights as a poet and was revered as a singer-saint even in his life-time. The mighty King Akbar,
renowned for his religious tolerance and broadmindedness, came to Surdas to listen to him sing
when Surdas politely declined his invitation to sing at his court. Although Surdas is known for
his greatest work - the Sur Sagar, he also wrote Sur-Saravali, which is based on the theory of
genesis and the festival of Holi, and Sahitya-Lahiri, devotional lyrics dedicated to the Supreme
Absolute. As if Surdas attained a mystical union with Lord Krishna, which enabled him to
compose the verse about Krishna's romance with Radha almost as he was an eyewitness. Surdas'
verse is also credited as one that lifted the literary value of the Hindi language, transforming it
from a crude to a pleasing tongue. His poems have also been included in the ‘Guru Granth Sahib’
of the Sikhs as all faiths respect his work and devotion.
Surdas' lilting music and fine poetry attracted many laurels. As his fame spread far and wide, the
Mughal emperor Akbar (1542-1605) became his patron. Surdas spent the last years of his life in
Braj, the place of his birth and lived on the donations, which he received in return of
his Bhajan singing and lecturing on religious topics until he died in c. 1586.