Note 57 — D.

Nâmdeo, the saint. 6. The Dhuniyas have in Nâmdeo Bhagat a tribal saint who is much respected by them. He is said to have been born in Mârwâr in A.D. 1443 and to have flourished in the time of Sikandar Lodi (1488–1512). According to one account he was a Mahratta and was born at Pandharpur, in the Dakkhin. “He is said to have been persecuted by the Musalmâns, who tried to persuade him to repeat the words Allâh! Allâh! instead of his favourite Râm! Râm! but by a variety of astonishing miracles he escaped from their hands. After a considerable amount of travelling to and fro, he at last settled in the village of Ghumân, in the Batâla Tahsîl of the Gurdâspur District, where he died. A shrine, known as the Darbâr, was erected in his honour in Ghumân, and on the Sankrânt day of every Mâgh a crowded fair is held there in his honour. His followers can scarcely be said to constitute a sect. They are almost entirely Chhimbas (the Dhuniyas of these Provinces) or Dhobis by caste. Their founder appears to have stoutly resisted the pretensions of Muhammadanism, and was looked as a follower of Râmchandra, but his Hinduism was by no means of the ordinary type. He taught emphatically the unity of God and the uselessness of ceremonial, and his doctrines would appear to have approached fairly close to those of Nânak and the Eastern Sikhs; and several of his poems are included in the Sikh Adi Granth. At any rate the followers of Bâba Nâmdeo are very largely Sikhs by religion, and they are said, whether Sikhs or Hindus by religion, to hold the Granth in reverence and to follow many Sikh customs. They have no distinctive worship of their own.”57