Bhagat Dhanna Ji

Bhagat Dhanna Ji was a Jat farmer of Dhuan Kalan in Tonk, Rajasthan. Three of his hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

The story attached to him is that as an illiterate cultivator he was given a stone by a Brahmin and told it was God, and that he set food before it and refused to eat until it ate with him, and that his sincerity was answered. Guru Arjan Dev Ji refers to it directly in his own composition in Asa, naming Dhanna alongside Namdev, Kabir, Ravidas and Sain.

That reference matters because it is a Guru, in scripture, listing the low-caste and non-Brahmin devotees by name as the standard of attainment.

He is one of the very few farmers among the Bhagats, which is not lost on a Punjabi Jat readership.

One of the three hymns lists what a household actually asks for, grain, cloth, a milk animal, a good horse, and then asks for the thing behind all of them. It is unusual in the volume for how domestic it is.

Guru Arjan Dev Ji names him with Namdev Ji, Kabir Ji, Ravidas Ji and Sain Ji in a hymn in Asa, which is the earliest internal evidence of how the Bhagats were regarded by the compilers.

The story of the stone and the offering comes from the later hagiographies and is told to make the point that the intention was accepted where the form was ignorant. It is among the best known stories in Punjabi religious teaching.

What we don't know

  • His dates.
  • Whether the stone episode predates the scriptural reference or was built out of it.

Where to check this

  1. Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Asa and Dhanasri. Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (searchable text and translations) ↗

This page has not yet been read through by the editor. Treat it with more caution than the rest.

How this page was written. The text is compiled from the standard published histories and reference works, not from a document held in hand. Nobody from this project has visited the place or read the archive. The list above is where a reader can go to check it, not a record of what was consulted line by line. Dates and figures are the received account. If you hold something better, write in and it will be corrected.

This is one of 65 accounts in Before the Gurus, the chapter of this site covering the region before 1469, from the Indus cities to the Lodhis.