Bhai Mardana Ji: the rababi who walked with Guru Nanak Dev Ji

This day remembers the passing of Bhai Mardana Ji, the companion of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji for most of his life and the first musician of the Sikh tradition. Sikhs speak of his akal chalana, his departure into the timeless, and of his merging with the Divine.

The minstrel of Talwandi

Bhai Mardana Ji was born in 1459 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib, into a family of Muslim mirasis, hereditary musicians. He was about ten years older than Guru Nanak Dev Ji and knew him from childhood. When the Guru set out on his long journeys, the udasis, Bhai Mardana Ji went with him, carrying the rabab, a stringed instrument. The Guru sang the bani as it came to him, and Bhai Mardana Ji set it to music; the Janamsakhis tell that the Guru would say, Mardana, play the rabab, the bani is coming.

Companion on every road

For more than two decades the two travelled together, east to Assam, south to Sri Lanka, north into the mountains and west to Mecca and Baghdad. The Janamsakhis tell many stories of their journeys, of hunger and danger shared, and of the Guru's affection for his friend. In the Vaar in Raag Bihagara of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, three shaloks of Guru Nanak Dev Ji are headed with his companion's name, Mardana. Accounts differ on where he died: some name Kartarpur, others the banks of the Kurram in Afghanistan during the journeys. Tradition holds that the Guru performed his last rites himself.

How he is remembered

His descendants, the rababis, kept singing kirtan at Sikh shrines for centuries. Sikhs remember his devotion with kirtan, often with the rabab and other string instruments in the old style, and with Ardas in gurdwaras.