amrutvani

Guru Granth Sahib
recognizes many saints of the Bhakti
movement of medieval India.
Kabir, Farid, Namdev are the saints belonging
to this movement which swept across the
North India from 1100 A.D. till 1600 A.D.
When Fifth Guru Guru Arjan dev ji compiled
Guru Granth Sahib, he decided to give some
recognition to the saints of Bhakti movement,
that is the reason that Guru Granth Sahib
contains verses of such saints. In some cases
Guru Granth Sahib is the only voice remained
for such saints over the years.

According to the generally accepted version
of the current traditions, Namdev was born
in AD 1270 to Damasheti, a low-caste tailor,
and his wife, Gonabai, in the village of
Naras-Vamani, [Narasi Bamani] in Satara
district of Maharashtra.
Janabai, the family's maidservant and a
bhakta and poetess in her own right,
records the tradition that Namdev was
born to Gonabai as a result of her worship
of Vitthala in Pandharpur. Namdev was
married before he was eleven years of age
to Rajabal, daughter of Govinda sheti Sadavarte.
He had four sons and one daughter,
Under the influence of saint Jnanadeva,
Namdev was converted from the path of bhakti
to spiritual realization of "aham brahmasmi",
the advaita vision. In most abhangs [devotional
songs] composed by Saint Namdev,
Vitthala of Pandharpur is the object of
his devotion and he spent much of his time in
worship and kirtan, chanting mostly verses
of his own composition. In the company of
Jnanadeva and other saints Saint Namdev
went to various pilgrimage places in the country.
Later Saint Namdev roamed about the country
and came to the Punjab where he is said
to have lived for more than twenty years
at Ghuman, in Gurdaspur district.
Here a temple in the form of
saint Namdev's samadhi still preserves his memory.
This temple was constructed by
Sardar Jassa Singh Ramgarhia and the tank
by its side was got repaired by Rani Sada Kaur ,
mother-in-law of Maharaja Ranjit Singh .

In his early fifties, Namdev settled down at
Pandharpur where he gathered around
himself a group of devotees. His abhangas
or devotional lyrics became very popular,
and people thronged to listen to his kirtan.

Namdev's songs have been collected in
Namdevachi Gatha, which also includes the
long autobiographical poem Tirathavali.
His Hindi verse and his extended visit to
the Punjab carried his fame far beyond
the borders of Maharashtra.

Sixty-one of his hymns in fact
came to be included in Sikh Scripture,
the Guru Granth Sahib.
These hymns or sabdas share the
common characteristic of lauding the
One Supreme God distinct from his earlier verse
which carries traces of idolatry and
saguna bhakti. In the course of his
spiritual quest, Namdev had, from
being a worshipper of the Divine in the
concrete form, become a devotee of the
attributeless ( nirguna) Absolute.