Pipa

(15th c.?) Poet-saint in the Sant religious
community. The name Sant is an
umbrella term for a group of central and
northern Indian poet-saints who share
several general tendencies: focus on
individualized, interior religion leading
to a personal experience of the divine;
disdain for external ritual, particularly
image worship; faith in the power of
repeating one’s patron deity’s name; and
the tendency to ignore conventional
caste distinctions.
According to tradition, Pipa was born
into a Rajput royal family in the Malwa
region but eventually renounced his
throne and went to Benares to become a
disciple of the poet-saint Ramananda.
The hagiographer Nabhadas reports
that Pipa was a disciple of the powerful
goddess Bhavani (an epithet of Parvati),
showing the breadth of the Sant tradition. A few of Pipa’s verses have been
preserved in the Adigranth, the sacred
text of the Sikh community, and in their
language and religious thrust the verses
are consistent with these traditions.