- Lived:
- c. 1414 – c. 1488 by tradition · born at Talaja on the Saurashtra coast (now in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat) → the life happened in Junagadh, under Girnar mountain; he died at Mangrol
- Field:
- bhakti poetry — Krishna devotion sung in Gujarati; honoured by tradition as the Ādi Kavi, the "first poet," of Gujarati literature
- The Big Idea:
- He defined the religious person entirely by conduct — the Vaiṣṇava is whoever feels another's pain — and he lived the definition, singing God's songs in the untouchable quarter and losing his caste for it.
- In their words:
- "Vaiṣṇava jana to tene kahiye je pīḍ parāī jāṇe re" — "Call that one a man of God, who feels another's pain as his own." (opening of his most famous song; the translation is ours)
- If you remember one thing:
- A poor singer in 15th-century Junagadh wrote a five-stanza definition of goodness; four and a half centuries later Gandhi made it the anthem of the freedom movement, sang it on the Salt March, and took from the same poet's vocabulary the word — Harijan, "God's people" — that he used for those India called untouchable.