Person · Gujarati poet-saint · India
Narsinh Mehtā
Also known as Narsinh Mehta — Junagadh
The 15-century Gujarati Vaishnava poet-saint Narsinh Mehta (1414-1480), traditionally called the Adi Kavi (First Poet) of Gujarati literature. Narsinh Mehta's bhajans and padas on Krishna devotion (particularly on Krishna's play with the gopis) form the foundational corpus of Gujarati devotional poetry. His most famous bhajan 'Vaishnava Jana To' ('A Vaishnava is one who feels another's pain') was Mahatma Gandhi's favourite — Gandhi had it sung at his prayer meetings. Narsinh Mehta lived at Junagadh and was initially rejected by the local Nagar Brahmin community for his devotion to the lower-caste Harijans; after a miraculous intervention by Krishna (the famous Hundi incident, where Krishna himself paid a merchant debt that Narsinh had assigned), he was accepted. His samadhi at Junagadh (the Narsinh Mehta Chaudo complex) draws over 100,000 pilgrims annually.
- Date
- 1414–1481
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Condition
- living song tradition
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — historical tradition; biography partly hagiographic
- Location
- 21.520, 70.460
About the place
Placed at Junagadh, the town he lived in and whose social order his poems and legend are set against.
Connections (2)
- Devotional corpus onMohandās Karamchand Gandhi
Gandhi had Vaishnava jana to sung at Sabarmatī every day, and it became the movement's hymn. Narsinh Mehtā's definition of a good person — one who feels another's pain and does not condescend in helping — is as close to a statement of Gandhian ethics as anything Gandhi wrote himself.
- Life routeGirnār rock inscriptions (Junāgaḍh)
Junāgadh under Girnār is Narsinh Mehtā's town, and the hill above it carries Ambā, Gorakhnāth, Dattātreya and the Jain temples. A Nagar Brahmin outcast for singing with untouchables came out of one of the most crowded sacred landscapes in western India. His Vaishnava jana to, defining a good person as one who feels another's pain and does not condescend in helping, was sung at Gandhi's ashram every day and is now Gujarat's state song.
On these journeys
Sources
Gujarati literary histories and Narsinh Mehta textual/performative tradition.
Open Narsinh Mehtā in the repository →