ગંગાસતી

Gangasati is the great woman mystic of the Saurashtra bhajan tradition, and almost everything about her life — even her century — belongs to oral memory rather than record; tradition places her somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Born in Rajpara and married into the Gohil household of Samdhiala near Bhavnagar, she is remembered through a single luminous story: when her husband resolved to take samadhi, he charged her with completing the spiritual education of Panbai, the young woman of the house in her care. Tradition holds that she then composed one bhajan a day for fifty-two days — a complete curriculum of the inner life, addressed simply and directly to Panbai — and, the teaching finished, took samadhi herself. The bhajans avoid the names of particular gods, speaking instead of the Guru, the word, and the unshakable mind, and they remain among the most sung verses in Saurashtra’s santvani gatherings.