Bihaagraa ki Vaar, Mehl 4 (Guru Ram Das), with Shaloks of Mehl 3, Mehl 1, Mehl 5, Kabir & Mardaanaa
The great ballad of Raag Bihaagraa: twenty-one Paurees hymning the One who "is Himself everything," braided with Shaloks on the wandering and the wakeful heart — including the rare voice of Mardaanaa, Guru Nanak's Muslim companion.
The Form
A Vaar is a long heroic ballad; the Gurus took the martial form and turned it to a spiritual war — the only battle worth fighting, the one inside the self. Bihaagraa ki Vaar has twenty-one Paurees ("steps/stanzas"), composed by Guru Ram Das (Fourth Mehl), each preceded by two or three Shaloks (teaching couplets/verses). The files run Pauri0–Pauri63: each numbered Pauree is the last file of its group, preceded by its Shaloks. Most Shaloks are Guru Amar Das (Third Mehl); the Vaar also carries Shaloks of Guru Ram Das (Fourth Mehl) (P19, P30), Guru Arjan (Fifth Mehl) (P40–41), Guru Nanak (First Mehl) (P58–59), and — remarkably — Bhagat Kabir (P49) and Mardaanaa (P33–34), Guru Nanak's lifelong rabab-playing companion, whose verses appear only a handful of times in the entire Guru Granth Sahib. The composition closes with the scribal seal ||21||1|| Sudh ("verified/correct").
The Arc
The Vaar has two interwoven strands. The Paurees are a sustained hymn to the One, dominated by the aapay ("He Himself") litany: the One is field and farmer (P17), ocean and boat and boatman (P26), Philosopher's Stone and metal and gold (P29), school and teacher and mother and father (P32), householder and renunciate (P23), even Shiva and the Yogi and the sensualist (P36) — every role in the cosmic play, played by one Source who "stages His own play and watches it." The Shaloks trace the human journey: the wandering, restless, self-turned heart (P3, P10, P25, P43) and the wakeful, One-turned, wonder-filled heart (P6, P21, P56, P62), pivoting again and again on jeevat marnaa — the paradox that quieting the ego brings us alive (P10, P47, P49–50).
Landmarks
The two birds on one tree (P16) — the ancient Upanishadic image: one restless bird that grabs, one serene bird that watches; both live in you, and attention chooses which grows.
The Mardaanaa "distillery" Shaloks (P33–35) — a landmark. Nanak's Muslim companion reinterprets brewing: don't get drunk on ego and desire; instead "let good deeds be your distillery, Truth your molasses, virtue your bread," and the highest wine is self-realization shared in good company.
"O Shaykh, abandon cruelty" (P24) — Guru Amar Das addressing a Muslim holy man as a fellow seeker, offering the universal medicine: soften the stone heart; "through lust and anger, no one has ever found God."
"When there was only the One" (P20, P54) — meditations on the Creator alone before all creation, resting in the fertile void (sunn) for "thirty-six ages," before scriptures, worlds, or time.
The tongue Shaloks (P12–13) and the false-wine-vs-True-Wine Shalok (P46) — the power of speech, and the replacement of what muddles the mind with the clarifying "wine" of love.
Equality (P39) — "He created the people of the eighteen castes": one Maker of every rank, so distinctions of birth carry no ultimate weight.
Translation Notes
P58 (the Kali-Yuga lament, First Mehl). The Gurmukhi describes a morally darkened age in stark, gendered, demon-imagery, including a line literally calling the wife "the chief of demons." This literal content is not rendered to a child. Per the project's anti-stigma and wellbeing rules (the same care that dropped the menstruation-simile in Aasaa ki Vaar B00C969 P58), the harsh particulars are set aside and only the true kernel is kept: when people forget what matters, selfishness can seep even into homes where love should live — heard as grief over a broken age, not a doctrine about any group, and turned immediately toward hope (remembrance restores warmth).
P59 (the idol critique, First Mehl). The Gurmukhi names Hindus worshipping stone idols and calls them "blind." The qMonk rendering universalizes the teaching and removes the singling-out, consistent with evenhandedness: the Gurus critiqued empty formalism in every tradition (cf. P24 to a Shaykh; Aasaa ki Vaar's even-handed critique of hypocrisy). The philosophical point kept is that the One is Nirankar, formless — no human-made object can be it; a symbol is a pointer, not the reality ("when the stone itself sinks, who carries you across?"). Offered as a caution good for everyone — don't confuse the pointer with what it points to — never as contempt for Hindus.
P52 ("chanting Raam Raam"). Not a critique of naam simran (which Sikhism treasures) but of mechanical, absent-minded repetition; rendered so as never to frame remembrance negatively (voice rule).
Punishment imagery in several Shaloks (P30 "City of Death, blackened faces"; P1; P55) is softened to its gentle kernel (an empty life feels heavy/flavorless), per the wellbeing rules; the karma of consequence is rendered as the seed-and-harvest logic children already grasp.
"Fear of God" (bhau, P7, P24, P34) is rendered as reverent, wonder-tinged awe, not fright — per the project's standing treatment of bhau.
Themes and Cross-Connections
The aapay litany is the Vaar's spine and one of Gurbani's grandest non-dual statements — kin to Japji's all-pervading One and to Guru Arjan's "of the same color" (Aasaa B00C808). Jeevat marnaa ("die while alive," P10/47/49/50) runs throughout the GGS (Gauree, Aasaa, Kabir). The ocean-and-boat as one One (P26) resolves the fear the ocean-image usually carries. The householder-and-renunciate-both (P23) blesses the Sikh householder path (the lotus in water; Sukhmani's Brahm Giani). The Mardaanaa and Kabir shaloks, and the Shaykh-address, embody the tradition's wide, shared table — the same universalism as Aasaa ki Vaar's interfaith litanies. Equality by one-Maker-of-all (P39) is the seed of Sikh casteless brotherhood, flowering in the langar and in Guru Arjan's honoring of the low-caste Bhagats (Aasaa B00C1019).
For Raag Bihaagraa
Where the raag's shabads sing the longing heart, its Vaar gives that heart a whole cosmos to rest in — a reality so full of the One that there is no leftover corner where the sacred isn't. The single image a child can carry from all twenty-one Paurees is the aapay wonder: the One isn't a faraway ruler running things from outside — it's inside everything, playing every part, the field and the farmer, the ocean and the boat, the teacher and the child. And braided through it are the Vaar's gentlest lessons for growing up: two birds live in you and you feed the one you notice; you become like whatever you give your heart to; the sweetest "drink" is knowing your own true self; and the whole long ballad ends not with a demand for greatness but with the humblest wish of all — to learn from the kindest, most loving people you can find.
The great ballad of Raag Bihaagraa: twenty-one Paurees hymning the One who "is Himself everything," braided with Shaloks on the wandering and the wakeful heart — including the rare voice of Mardaanaa, Guru Nanak's Muslim companion.
The Form
A Vaar is a long heroic ballad; the Gurus took the martial form and turned it to a spiritual war — the only battle worth fighting, the one inside the self. Bihaagraa ki Vaar has twenty-one Paurees ("steps/stanzas"), composed by Guru Ram Das (Fourth Mehl), each preceded by two or three Shaloks (teaching couplets/verses). The files run Pauri0–Pauri63: each numbered Pauree is the last file of its group, preceded by its Shaloks. Most Shaloks are Guru Amar Das (Third Mehl); the Vaar also carries Shaloks of Guru Ram Das (Fourth Mehl) (P19, P30), Guru Arjan (Fifth Mehl) (P40–41), Guru Nanak (First Mehl) (P58–59), and — remarkably — Bhagat Kabir (P49) and Mardaanaa (P33–34), Guru Nanak's lifelong rabab-playing companion, whose verses appear only a handful of times in the entire Guru Granth Sahib. The composition closes with the scribal seal ||21||1|| Sudh ("verified/correct").
The Arc
The Vaar has two interwoven strands. The Paurees are a sustained hymn to the One, dominated by the aapay ("He Himself") litany: the One is field and farmer (P17), ocean and boat and boatman (P26), Philosopher's Stone and metal and gold (P29), school and teacher and mother and father (P32), householder and renunciate (P23), even Shiva and the Yogi and the sensualist (P36) — every role in the cosmic play, played by one Source who "stages His own play and watches it." The Shaloks trace the human journey: the wandering, restless, self-turned heart (P3, P10, P25, P43) and the wakeful, One-turned, wonder-filled heart (P6, P21, P56, P62), pivoting again and again on jeevat marnaa — the paradox that quieting the ego brings us alive (P10, P47, P49–50).
Landmarks
Translation Notes
Themes and Cross-Connections
The aapay litany is the Vaar's spine and one of Gurbani's grandest non-dual statements — kin to Japji's all-pervading One and to Guru Arjan's "of the same color" (Aasaa B00C808). Jeevat marnaa ("die while alive," P10/47/49/50) runs throughout the GGS (Gauree, Aasaa, Kabir). The ocean-and-boat as one One (P26) resolves the fear the ocean-image usually carries. The householder-and-renunciate-both (P23) blesses the Sikh householder path (the lotus in water; Sukhmani's Brahm Giani). The Mardaanaa and Kabir shaloks, and the Shaykh-address, embody the tradition's wide, shared table — the same universalism as Aasaa ki Vaar's interfaith litanies. Equality by one-Maker-of-all (P39) is the seed of Sikh casteless brotherhood, flowering in the langar and in Guru Arjan's honoring of the low-caste Bhagats (Aasaa B00C1019).
For Raag Bihaagraa
Where the raag's shabads sing the longing heart, its Vaar gives that heart a whole cosmos to rest in — a reality so full of the One that there is no leftover corner where the sacred isn't. The single image a child can carry from all twenty-one Paurees is the aapay wonder: the One isn't a faraway ruler running things from outside — it's inside everything, playing every part, the field and the farmer, the ocean and the boat, the teacher and the child. And braided through it are the Vaar's gentlest lessons for growing up: two birds live in you and you feed the one you notice; you become like whatever you give your heart to; the sweetest "drink" is knowing your own true self; and the whole long ballad ends not with a demand for greatness but with the humblest wish of all — to learn from the kindest, most loving people you can find.
Last updated: 2026-07-05