Mata Khivi Ji

Mata Khivi Ji was the wife of Guru Angad Dev Ji and ran the langar at Khadur Sahib for decades, through her husband's guruship and afterward.

She is named in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, in the Ramkali ki Var by Satta and Balwand, as a good woman who gave shade like a leafy tree and distributed rich food. That is one of a very small number of named women in the volume and the naming is for the kitchen.

The langar under her is described as serving kheer with ghee, which is a specific and unglamorous detail that has survived four hundred and fifty years because a musician put it in a hymn.

She outlived her husband by thirty years and continued at Khadur.

A woman being named in scripture for administrative work rather than for devotion is unusual anywhere and it says something precise about what the early Sikh community thought was worth recording.

She was from Sanghar and was married to Bhai Lehna before he became Guru Angad Dev Ji. Their children were Dasu, Datu, Amro and Anokhi. Bibi Amro Ji carried the hymns to Basarke when she married into that village, which is how Guru Amar Das Ji first heard them and came to Khadur.

Khadur Sahib is in Tarn Taran district near the Beas and nothing at the site is original. What stands there is nineteenth century and later. The institution she ran left no building and survives as one line of verse and a practice that never stopped.

She ran it for decades, through her husband's period and after it. The langar as a permanent institution rather than an occasional charity begins here.

What we don't know

  • Her dates, which are traditional.

Where to check this

  1. Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ramkali ki Var. Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (searchable text and translations) ↗

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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 130 accounts in The Ten, the chapter of this site covering the Gurus, from 1469 to 1708.