Raag Bhairao, Shabad (four stanzas with rahau), Bhagat Kabir
The Name of the One — this alone is my wealth. I neither hoard it nor sell it.
The Arc
This is the doorway into the entire Bhagat block of the Guru Granth Sahib — the first composition after the Gurus' own Bhairao hymns, and the voice that opens it is Kabir, a low-caste weaver who belonged to neither Hindu nor Muslim orthodoxy and spoke past both. The shabad reframes an entire economic vocabulary — wealth, capital, crop, savings, inheritance — around a single treasure, the Name. The rahau (Pauri0) sets the key: this wealth is not for hoarding (no knot) or trading (no sale). Each following stanza re-spends one word of the merchant's ledger: field and harvest, capital, family and heir. The closing turn is quiet and radical — the person truly worth honoring is not the rich one but the one kept inwardly free while surrounded by riches.
Key Vocabulary
Dhan — wealth. Naa-o / Naam — the Name, the felt presence of the One. Gaanth — a knot (as in coins knotted in cloth); gaanth na baadhau = I do not hoard. Poonjee — capital, a merchant's stake. Maa-i-aa — the world of wealth and appearances, here re-claimed as the Name itself. Saran — sanctuary, shelter. Udaas — unattached, unclutched (not sad; inwardly free). Daas — servant.
Themes and Cross-Connections
The hymn belongs to the great current of naam-dhan, the Name-as-wealth, that runs through the whole scripture; the Gurus sing it too. Kabir's distinctive move is to borrow the exact language of the marketplace he lived beside — he was a working weaver, not a monk — and turn every commercial term toward the One. It also connects to the recurring GGS insight that nothing material accompanies us at the end (see the very next shabad, on naked coming and going): here the counter-treasure is named first, before the emptiness of the rest is exposed.
For Raag Bhairao
Bhairao is a bright, awake, morning-facing raag, and this opener sets its Bhagat section ringing with plain confidence rather than longing — a settled declaration of what one owns. It is fitting that the section that will go on to level caste, question ritual, and hold Hindu and Muslim as one, begins by quietly redefining wealth itself.
Translation Notes
— Interfaith/social: the whole shabad reframes wealth for a poor working man, foregrounding dignity over possession — a caste-and-class-leveling note struck at the very threshold of the Bhagat block; kept gentle and universal. — Udaas rendered as “free inside / unclutched,” never “sad” or “world-renouncing,” to avoid a bleak reading for children. — Maa-i-aa introduced as “the world of money and things,” then shown being re-claimed, rather than simply condemned. — Grace-framing kept in the last stanza: the free heart is kept free (received), not self-made. — “Daas/servant” rendered as admiration (“I look up to”), not servility.
The Name of the One — this alone is my wealth. I neither hoard it nor sell it.
The Arc
This is the doorway into the entire Bhagat block of the Guru Granth Sahib — the first composition after the Gurus' own Bhairao hymns, and the voice that opens it is Kabir, a low-caste weaver who belonged to neither Hindu nor Muslim orthodoxy and spoke past both. The shabad reframes an entire economic vocabulary — wealth, capital, crop, savings, inheritance — around a single treasure, the Name. The rahau (Pauri0) sets the key: this wealth is not for hoarding (no knot) or trading (no sale). Each following stanza re-spends one word of the merchant's ledger: field and harvest, capital, family and heir. The closing turn is quiet and radical — the person truly worth honoring is not the rich one but the one kept inwardly free while surrounded by riches.
Key Vocabulary
Dhan — wealth. Naa-o / Naam — the Name, the felt presence of the One. Gaanth — a knot (as in coins knotted in cloth); gaanth na baadhau = I do not hoard. Poonjee — capital, a merchant's stake. Maa-i-aa — the world of wealth and appearances, here re-claimed as the Name itself. Saran — sanctuary, shelter. Udaas — unattached, unclutched (not sad; inwardly free). Daas — servant.
Themes and Cross-Connections
The hymn belongs to the great current of naam-dhan, the Name-as-wealth, that runs through the whole scripture; the Gurus sing it too. Kabir's distinctive move is to borrow the exact language of the marketplace he lived beside — he was a working weaver, not a monk — and turn every commercial term toward the One. It also connects to the recurring GGS insight that nothing material accompanies us at the end (see the very next shabad, on naked coming and going): here the counter-treasure is named first, before the emptiness of the rest is exposed.
For Raag Bhairao
Bhairao is a bright, awake, morning-facing raag, and this opener sets its Bhagat section ringing with plain confidence rather than longing — a settled declaration of what one owns. It is fitting that the section that will go on to level caste, question ritual, and hold Hindu and Muslim as one, begins by quietly redefining wealth itself.
Translation Notes
— Interfaith/social: the whole shabad reframes wealth for a poor working man, foregrounding dignity over possession — a caste-and-class-leveling note struck at the very threshold of the Bhagat block; kept gentle and universal. — Udaas rendered as “free inside / unclutched,” never “sad” or “world-renouncing,” to avoid a bleak reading for children. — Maa-i-aa introduced as “the world of money and things,” then shown being re-claimed, rather than simply condemned. — Grace-framing kept in the last stanza: the free heart is kept free (received), not self-made. — “Daas/servant” rendered as admiration (“I look up to”), not servility.