Surdas

Surdas

Surdas (1478 – 1583) was a Hindu devotional poet, singer, and a saint (sant), who followed the Shuddhadvaita school of Brahmavada. He was a desciple of Mahaprabhu Shri Vallabhacharya. He lived during reign of king Akbar (1542-1606). Surdas spent most of his years in Vrindavan and created the epic literary work Sur Sagar, which originally contained 1,00,000 poems. Surdas was born blind, and yet the most influential poet of Braj Bhasha and the 'Bhakti movement' after Tulsidas. Surdas was born blind and hence received harsh treatment from his family, and during his early childhood. One day at age 6, when he heard a group of devotional singers, passing by his home he simply followed them, and he left home forever. At age eighteen, Surdas met his future guru, the sant Sri Vallabhacharya on the banks of river Yamuna. Vallabhacharya took him under his tutelage and thus began Surdas's teaching in prevalent Bhakti Shuddha advaita (Non-dualism philosophy), as Vallabhacharya was the founder of the Pushti sect (Pushtimarg) in India.