If there was ever a saint who deserved the truthful application of the cliché that he possessed ‘Inner Sight’, it was Surdas. That he is one of the greatest poets the Hindi language has ever known and that his work is a living reality taught in schools all over the country even today is important but not as important as his extraordinary love for Krishna. He was one of the greatest figures in the bhakti movement, which anyway bristled like a thicket with great ones, since it emerged in the tenth century to totally transform Hindu religion. The traditional date for the birth of Surdas is 1478 and there is no great reason to doubt it. He was born in a village called Siri, then on the outskirts of Delhi and today totally swallowed up by the expanding city. His life is almost totally devoid of any other historical accuracy in the reports that have come down to us, other than the usual romantic fantasies of the hagiographers. In his case what really mattered was the work and his work was only an external manifestation for his great love for Krishna. Reports of his marriage and entanglements with amorous temptresses seem to be no more than the standard stories which arise around such saintly figures. For the average Indian mind, saintliness is not really sanctioned until it has encountered and resisted or overcome fleshy temptations! The truth is even though he was born blind he was an amazingly creative talent from infancy and his love for Krishna seemed to have been genetically designed into him. He took to wandering at an early age, impelled by the power of his genius, being as great a singer as a poet and a favorite wherever he went. Unlike other bhakti saints he seems to have faced very little actual opposition and abuse from the orthodoxy, presumably because his genius was too manifest to be resisted and also because Bhakti had become too popular by his time for such an obvious saint to be persecuted with ease. His choice of subject matter, though dealing with the loves of Krishna was couched in language very chaste, there was none, (well almost none) of the embarrassingly frank detail so beloved of Sanskrit erotica, which used to serve as the template for the devotional poets. At the age of eighteen he reached Gau Ghat a sacred bathing spot on the banks of the holy river Yamuna, somewhere between the cities of Mathura and Agra. He had a chance meeting with Shri Vallabharacharya, the great saint-savant of the age who listened to this young genius and instantly realized he had not found an area of work comparable to this talent. He gave Surdas the significant advice to sing of Bhagvat Lila, the Creative Play of the Lord. He also initiated the young man into the mysteries of pure contemplative devotion. He had no formal guru before that, and had missed out on the transfer of power believed to be so essential on the spiritual path. After that there was no stopping him. He almost immediately attained a mystical union with Krishna and from then on he could bring before his minds eye any episode in the life of Krishna that he chose which he then rendered into verse almost as if an eyewitness report. He then moved to Vraj or Braja Bhoomi the traditional locale of the childhood of Krishnan and he never shifted from there until his death in 1583. The poetic compositions came in a flood, and they never seemed to vary much in quality, as they were indeed a species of automatic writing. He had the habit of singing the evening bhajans at the local temple and he could always describe in great and exact detail the daily adornments of the image of Krishna. Most accepted this as part of his inner sight but a few skeptics thought he was merely well informed of the seasonal and festival changes and tried out a test. One day the sanctum doors opened to reveal the image of god in its stark purity of stone with not a single flower or ornament on it - and Surdas sang, as if it was the most normal thing, “Today I see the Lord Unadorned.” So that was that. His work consists primarily of three major compilations, the Sur-Saravali, the Sahitya-Lahiri and the Sur-Sagar. The Saravali is supposed to have originally one hundred thousand verses but many have been lost forever. It is based on the analogy of the Holi festival, by far the most popular of the festivals of the time, and always associated with Krishna as part of his Divine Play. It is unique in that he actually attempts to formulate a theory of Genesis in that with Krishna being the Creator God, and with 24 incarnations of Vishnu being described until with verse 360 he gets to the main event - the incarnation of Krishna and the actions of his life. In between he intersperses it with descriptions of Ragas and descriptions of Vasant and Holi festivals. Apart from being great narrative poetry they are also significant sources of information about the past. The Sahitya-Lahiri is supposedly a treatise of various forms of poetical composition, dealing primarily with Bhakti. This work still excites the disparagement of the Victorian minded for Surdas evokes the older vein of Sanskrit poetry in full-blown sensuousness here and that still abashes many people. The Sur-Sagar is his masterpiece, the ‘oceanic work’ as its name indicates and remains the most influential and important of all his works. It deals with the life of Krishna in such tireless detail that most people are convinced this is the authentic version! This is not the hardheaded patrician of the Mahabharatha, the politician and warrior. This is a beloved and naughty child, incapable of tolerating any frustration because of his divine nature that demands everybody concede his automatic superiority. Since Krishna is the universe, or rather the Universe is a minor part of Krishna, this is a valid position to take. In the imagination of North India at least, the life and times of Krishna follow the Surdas version not the Mahabharatha or the Bhagvatam, which are the older and more ‘authentic’ versions. Such is the power of a real poet in full flow. It also confirmed a tendency to over sentimentalize everything and view every situation through a sheen of tears but such things happen. Surdas made Krishna, a dangerously ambivalent and sometimes ruthless god, into an object of mass devotion, the recipient of the loving indulgence we give to an adorable baby, or even more interestingly, the ultimate object of love, a chance to transmute ordinary fleshy love into a pathway for salvation. It was a remarkable project and a testament to this genius that it worked so well. No other god straddles the spectrum quite so widely and so comfortably, and contradictions that may exist are all Lila, Divine Play, and not for mere mortals to question. He literally reinvented and popularized a god who was more respected than loved until then and made him zoom to the forefront in the devotional stakes. The dominant position of Krishna in the mental life of the Hindus is in many ways a contribution of Surdas. - Rohit Arya Archive