F. Max Müller, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion(London: Long-
mans, Green, 1882), 277.
In Ravidas’s usage, the term Ram refers not to Ramacandra, the hero of the
Ramayana and the seventh avatar of Vishnu, but to God in general. In part because it
rhymes with the Hindi word for “name” (nam), Ram is a name of God especially wor-
thy of human contemplation. The phrase ram nam is also used in AG27 below.
In the phrase “Priests or merchants, laborers or warriors” Ravidas lists the four
classical divisions (varna) of Indian society. But even beneath the lowest of these, the
laborers, are others: “half-breeds” (candar), “outcastes” (malech), and “those who tend
the cremation fires” (dom). These are all Untouchables.
The phrase “Queen City, a place with no pain” translates the Hindi begam pura.
Purameans plainly “city,” but begam has two possible meanings. The easiest way to con-
strue it is as the Urdu word meaning “a lady of nobility”—whence the translation
“queen”—since Indian cities with a Muslim past often have names such as this. The al-
ternative, however, is to hear it as a compound ofbe, “without,” and gam,“pain.” The
translation attempts to preserve the ambiguity. This poem is notable for the extent of its
Urdu vocabulary, but that should occasion no surprise. If Ravidas has a poem that bor-
ders on being genuinely political, it is this, and the overriding political institutions of his
time were Muslim. The friend or friends mentioned in the last line may be any compan-
ion in Queen City or that special companion, God.
