RAMDAS, BAVA, a nineteenth‑century Punjabi poet, was born at the village of Harganari, in Fatehgarh Sahib district of the Punjab. He belonged to the Divana sect, a mendicant order established during the seventeenth century by Haria and Bala, two Jatt disciples of Sodhi Miharban, the son of Guru Arjan’s elder brother, Prithi Chand. The Divanas later became a subsect of the Udasis. They have their main centre at Pirkot, in Bathinda district, and another at Patiala which was founded by Bava Ram Das and is now known as Bava Ram Das Ji Ka Dera. Ram Das was patronized by Maharaja Narinder Singh of Patiala (1846–62).
As a poet he wrote on a wide range of subjects—social, political, ethical, and spiritual. His language is a mixture of Braj, Hindi, and Punjabi, commonly known as Sadh Bhakha, and his script is Gurmukhi. Of his eleven poetic works only two were published in lithographed editions from Lahore during the early 1890s and another one in Devanagari transliteration from Lucknow in 1875. The rest, in manuscript form, are preserved in different libraries—the Central Public Library, Motibagh Palace Library, Bhasha Vibhag Library and the Punjab State Archives, all at Patiala, and in the Khalsa College Library at Amritsar.
Birad Pratdp (written in 1803) deals with mythological and ethical themes. Sdr Rdmdyan (1808) is the poet’s version of the epic in abridged form. Can Prastar Prakash (1818) is a treatise on Indian prosody. Rajniti Bava Ram Das Ji Dt is a statement of the ethico‑political views of the author in doh and Kundad metres. It was written in 1825. Pancham Bava Ram Das Ji Di (1826) mainly focuses on the theme of Guru’s grace and the disciple’s selfless service. Draupadi Charitra (1842) is a brief narration in verse of the Mahabharata story of Draupadi’s disgrace and her rescue through the intervention of Krishna. Kedar Panth Prakash (1853) is a versified travelogue describing Maharaja Narinder Singh’s pilgrimage to Kedarnath and Badrinath, in the Himalayan tract of Uttar Pradesh.
Ath Sdr Vashisht Savaiyyd (1855) is a series of 108 stanzas in savaiyyd metre glorifying God and His saints, and proclaiming the virtues of a temperate moral living. Baranmaha Bava Ram Das Ji Kd (1859) is a poem in the popular mode of bardnmdhd (lit. twelve months), in which poets deal with a usually romantic theme in a kind of acrostic, the stanzas beginning successively with the names of the months of the year. Ram Das’s poem depicts a devotee’s craving for the Lord. The dates of the remaining two works, Yatrit Rikhikesh Di and Ath Chhattis Varni Tatha Chhandwali, are not known.
The former, in Kundalta metre, discusses various practices which enable a devotee to reach his goal and the latter is a type of acrostic, each stanza commencing with the successive letters of the alphabet. The poet begins his works with the Mul Mantra recorded in its abbreviated form.
References :
- Rose, H.A., ed., The Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North‑West Frontier Province. Lahore, 1911–19
- Randhir Singh, Udasi Sikhan di Vithia. Amritsar, 1959 Gr.S
