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Ravidas – from the Adi Granth 29

[extracted from Songs of the Saints of India – translated by Professor  John Stratton Hawley and Professor Mark Juergensmeyer]

A family that has a true follower of the Lord
Is neither high caste nor low caste, lordly or poor
The world will know it by its fragrance
Priests or merchants, labourers or warriors,
halfbreeds, outcasts and those who tend cremation fires –
their hearts are all the same.
He who becomes pure through love of the Lord
exalts himself and his family as well.
Thanks be to his village, thanks to his home,
thanks to that pure family, each and every one,
For he’s drunk with the essence of the liquid of life
and he pours away all the poisons.
No one equals someone so pure and devoted -
not priests, not heroes, not parasolled kings.
As the lotus leaf floats above the water, Ravidas says,
so he flowers above the world of his birth.