Bhai Mardana: the musician beside Guru Nanak

Talwandi, family and companionship

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism identifies Mardana as a Muslim musician from Talwandi, the village where Nanak also grew up. His parents belonged to a hereditary community of musicians and genealogists. Its biography connects his move to Sultanpur with Nanak’s employment there and describes him as already married, with children. This places the musician within a working household, rather than treating him only as an attendant in somebody else’s life.[1]

In the janam-sakhi narratives discussed by the encyclopaedia, Mardana travels with Nanak and plays while the Guru sings. Hunger, fear and humour often give him a recognisably human voice in these stories. Their miraculous rescues belong to religious narrative. The entry gives 1459–1534 as his dates, but the surviving biographical tradition is different from a contemporary record of every journey and conversation.[1]

A partnership at the beginning of kirtan

Navtej K. Purewal’s study places Mardana at the origin of the rababi tradition of shabad kirtan, the musical performance of Sikh sacred hymns. Her account stresses the social relationship embodied in a Muslim musician’s place beside the Guru. Mardana’s significance therefore concerns the making of religious music through collaboration, as well as personal loyalty. Purewal also examines how later religious boundaries can make this Muslim presence difficult to accommodate in simplified accounts of Sikh history.[2]

The rabab and its material history

The instrument associated with Mardana is a rabab, a plucked string instrument. A later north Indian example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is made from tun wood and catalogued around 1885 as an unfretted lute. The museum notes that such an instrument was also sometimes called a rudra vina when collected. This object helps distinguish a historical instrument family from a single unchanging design; it is centuries later than Mardana and is not his surviving instrument.[3]

Remembered together in painting

A British Library album painting dated about 1780 shows Nanak and Mardana seated together, the musician playing his rabab. The catalogue identifies Lucknow style, a Polier Collection provenance and Persian labels naming the pair. Mardana wears a green jama and turban, while Nanak is shown in blue. Their shared appearance in a late eighteenth-century album gives the musical partnership a visual afterlife beyond Punjab. The painting documents remembrance rather than an eyewitness likeness.[4]