Bhagat Sadhna Ji

Bhagat Sadhna Ji was a butcher of Sehwan in Sindh. One hymn of his is in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, in Bilaval.

The composition is a plea, not a teaching. It says the petitioner has nothing to offer and asks not to be turned away, and it uses the image of a man who comes to the door at the last hour.

That a butcher's prayer sits in the volume, in the same raga section as the Gurus, is a fact worth stating plainly, because the caste logic of the region held that his trade made him permanently unfit.

A shrine to him is at Sirhind. It was damaged in the destruction of the town in 1710 and rebuilt.

The hymn is in Bilaval. It uses the figure of a man who has come to a house with nothing to offer and asks to be taken in on that basis, and it names the petitioner at the end.

The tradition places him at Sehwan in Sindh, a major Sufi centre now around the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, and gives him no dates that can be relied on. Butchers were among the lowest ranked occupational groups in the region and the trade is what the tradition emphasises.

The shrine at Sirhind associated with him was damaged when the town was destroyed and there has been intermittent local effort to maintain a memorial there since. It is on no pilgrimage route and receives few visitors.

What we don't know

  • His dates.
  • Whether the Sirhind shrine's association is documented or traditional.

Where to check this

  1. Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Bilaval. 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.